Do you Google? 5 easy ways to enhance your search and really find what you are looking for

Internet without searching is like a car without wheels. You won’t get too far. Using the same analogy – would you rather have a car with new tires or tires that you found on a junk yard? Both would work, but the new ones will just work much better. And the same applies to the way you search. But don’t worry, to go from junk yard searches to brand new Michelin’s won’t cost you anything. All you need is to ask Google nicely. Here’s 5 simple queries that will make Google cooperate nicely.

1. Enter keywords you want to exclude from your search.

Syntax:  search terms -word to exclude

Consider this – you are looking for online marketing opportunities. Entering simple ‘online marketing opportunities’ into Google will give you results for everything that is even remotely related to online marketing opportunities. But what if you only want to see results for affiliate marketing, GPT, e-commerce etc but not for MLM? You can refine your search like this: online marketing opportunities -MLM. This will tell Google to exclude anything related to MLM and display results only for all other online marketing opportunities. One thing to remember – the syntax uses a space between your search keyword and the minus sign. If you do not include the space, it will only act as hyphenated word.

2. Search for exact phrase.

Syntax: “keyword phrase”

If you are looking for an exact phrase, without substituting any part of the phrase with synonyms, and do not want Google to insert any other words between your phrase, simply put double quotes around you phrase. By doing so, Google will only display results that match your phrase 100%, and match the word order of your phrase exactly.

3. Search for exact match.

Syntax: +keyword

This is similar to double quotes, but allows you to specify a single word from your phrase that you want to match 100%.  Consider this:  affiliate marketing opportunities +NY.  The results will match NY exactly and will not use any synonyms for the keyword NY. It will not display results where NY is spelled out as New York, NYC etc. One thing to remember: The plus sign mus be right before the word you want to match, with no space in between. If you place a space between the + and the word, it will act as query addition, not as exact match.

4. Substitute words with wildcard.

Syntax: *

Many times, you do not know the exact phrase. In that case, you can substitute parts of the * wildcard. This can be also usefull if you want to include several terms into one phrase. Consider this: affiliate * opportunities. This will result in Google substituting the * sign with any words. For example, it will display searches that include word ‘online‘, ‘offline‘, ‘marketing‘, ‘money making‘ etc.

5. Search within a website.

Syntax: keyword site:NameOfTheWebsite

With this search you can search for your keyword within a specific web site. The search results will not display any results from any other site, even if the results are the same (for example, the same article posted on different web sites). Consider this: affiliate marketing site:WarriorForum. This displays all results that include keywords affiliate marketing from WarriorForum web site. Normally, you can perform these searches on forums themselves, however, this syntax works also for sites and blogs that do not have search implemented in them. And there is one more cool trick you can do with this – you can search within all web sites with specific extension. For example affiliate marketing site:.edu will display results for affiliate marketing only from .edu web sites.

Use these five simple queries, combine them and experiment with them, and soon enough, you and Google searches will be in sync. You will save lots of time sorting through results you were not looking for. And as we all know – time is money.

Bookmark It