How to Search Google Like a Pro

Exact Words and Phrases

One of the most basic and widely known search tricks is using quotation marks to search for an exact phrase. For example, perform the following search and you’ll only get pages that contain the word “Chinavasion” followed by the word “Electronics”

“Chinavasion Electronics”

Excluding a Word

The minus sign allows you to specify words that shouldn’t appear in your results. For example, if you’re looking for pages about Linux distributions that don’t mention Ubuntu, use the following search:

linux distributions -ubuntu

Site Search

The site: operator allows you to perform a search in a specific site. Let’s say you’re looking for information on Android Chinavasion website. You could use the following search

site:chinavasion.com Android

or

inurl:chinavasion.com Android

Related Words

The tilde (~) operator is the opposite of enclosing a single word in quotes — it searches for related words, not just the word you type. For example, if you ran the following search, you’d find search results with words similar to “gadget”:

~gadget

The Wildcard

The asterisk (*) is a wildcard that can match any word. For example:

android * from chinavasion

Word Definitions

You don’t have to Google a word and look for a dictionary link if you want to see its definition. Use the following search trick and you’ll see an inline definition:

define:Chinavasion

Calculator

Use Google as a calculator. Here’s an example:

(4 + 2) * (6 / 3)

Unit Conversions

The calculator can also convert between units. Just type “X [units] in [units]”. Here’s an example:

54uds in eur

or

30feet in m

File Type

The filetype: operator lets you search for files of a specific file type. For example, you could search for only PDF files.

filetype:pdf android user manual

To learn more check all tips & tricks here!