When an internet user needs to find anything on the World Wide Web, first thing he does is to ask Google. He types in the necessary word or words and Google displays the relevant results. Most of the time he is satisfied with the results. But under certain circumstances Google does not provide the exact answers we are looking for. The answers to the query might not be what we are looking for. This looks like an interesting case study for people interested in SEO and search engine rankings. How can we make Google provide the proper answers? Are there any Google search tips and tricks to easily find the information?
When an internet user needs to find anything on the World Wide Web, first thing he does is to ask Google. He types in the necessary word or words and Google displays the relevant results. Most of the time he is satisfied with the results. But under certain circumstances Google does not provide the exact answers we are looking for. The answers to the query might not be what we are looking for. This looks like an interesting case study for people interested in SEO and search engine rankings. How can we make Google provide the proper answers? Are there any Google search tips and tricks to easily find the information?
1) Use of quotations: When you need to search for a phrase use quotations marks around the phrase. For e.g.: if you are searching for Mumbai local train timetable, add quote marks before and after the phrase. So when you type in this manner “Mumbai local train timetable”, Google will fetch you the right results you are looking for. Of course, the phrase should be exactly in the way you would expect Google to show. Instead of the above phrase if you type “Mumbai local timetable train”, (note the position of the word timetable) you would hardly get any results.
2) Add or remove some search results: Not only SEO experts, but every common man should be aware of this useful web trick. When you query Google, the search engine understands what you are looking for. But sometimes it can provide you unnecessary details. To include certain searches while excluding others one needs to add the plus and minus sign before the words.
So just for example, consider you are looking for a hotel ABC located both at Mumbai city and Paris city. You need to visit the Mumbai hotel so in Google you need to type hotel ABC +mumbai -paris. The search engine will show you results for hotel ABC in Mumbai city and not in Paris. If you just type hotel ABC, it will show you results for both Mumbai and Paris.
3) The wildcard operator (*): This is another useful trick to search for a missing term on Google. Most probably you are not sure of the information to type, hence you can use an * mark to substitute that word. So to find out who invented the first telephone you type – first telephone was invented by *. The asterisk is used to replace the inventor name who incidentally is Alexander Graham Bell.
4) Searching for related words: Few SEO professionals must be aware of this trick. To search for a related word in addition to the original search term/s use the symbol ~. So if you want to search for Tourism in Mumbai and also want to include the word Bollywood in it, type “tourism Mumbai” ~Bollywood.
5) Quick definitions: To quickly find the definition of some term, type define:search term. Google will provide the definition of the search term. To find out what is the definition of SEO, type in Google define:SEO. The search engine will provide you the answer.
6) Site search feature: This is another useful way to get to a particular webpage or section in a website. For e.g., if you want to visit the trucks and buses page of Tata Motors go to google and type in the search box site:www.tatamotors.com trucks and buses. Remember ‘trucks and buses’ are not part of the domain name but rather are a search term. Google will directly show you the relevant links of trucks and buses in the website.
It can be quite frustrating if you do not find the stuff you are looking for on search engines. Knowing the different tactics provided by Google helps us to procure the information we are looking for. An SEO professional should also be aware of these different ways of searching to strengthen his search engine strategies.
