Google is a popular search engine because of its simplicity and highly relevant search results. For most searches, I can quickly and easily find what I am looking for, and rarely will I have to scroll to the next page of search results to find what I need. However, there are times when I need to refine my searches in specific ways. Did you know that there are some lesser-known advanced search options available?
The Advanced Search allows you to find pages that match a combination of all words in a list, exact phrases, any words in a list, none of the words in a list, or numbers in a range.
Results in advanced searches can be further restricted by language, region, last update, and other parameters.
There is also an Advanced Image Search that allows you to find images with all words in a list, exact phrases, any words in a list, or none of the words in a list.
Additionally, from the main page at www.google.com, you can specify “command line” search parameters. One of my favorite features is to search within a specific website by putting “site:” in front of a domain. For example, if I was looking for an article that I read in the Los Angeles Times, I could add “site:latimes.com” to my search query to restrict results to pages within that domain.
Another one of my favorites is to find websites that link to a certain URL. For example, if I wanted to find websites that direct the most traffic to https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/index.html, I could search for “site:https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/index.html”. Interestingly, according to this article, a Google employee recommends not using the “link:” operator. Furthermore, Google’s Refine web searches support page does not list the “link:” operator, but it does provide a bunch of other potentially useful operators to help you refine your search. That being said, I am still able to find modest success with the “link:” operator.
Hope this helps you level up your search game on Google.
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