MORE than four billion people perform a Google search every month – yet few take advantage of the site’s catalog of hidden codes.
Known as “search operators”. they can be plugged into the search engine alongside your keywords to refine your search in a number of ways.
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By focusing on certain keywords and excluding others – or by narrowing down where to search – they allow you to use Google more accurately and efficiently.
For instance, using the little-known commands, you can ask Google to only search social media, or to search for a price.
Search operators also allow you to combine two searches, search a specific website and exclude certain words from your search.
A number of the codes use punctuation, which Google usually ignores if it isn’t part of a search operator.
Try typing keywords with and without the commands listed below to see how much they change your search results.
Don’t put spaces between the symbol or word and your search term. For example, a search for site:thesun.co.uk will work, but site: thesun.co.uk won’t.
COMMON SEARCH TECHNIQUES
Search social media
Put @ in front of a word to search social media. For example: @twitter.
Search for a price
Put $ in front of a number. For example: camera $400.
Search hashtags
Put # in front of a word. For example: #throwbackthursday
Exclude words from your search
Put – in front of a word you want to leave out. For example, jaguar speed -car
Search for an exact match
Put a word or phrase inside quotes. For example, “tallest building”.
Search within a range of numbers
Put .. between two numbers. For example, camera $50..$100.
Combine searches
Put “OR” between each search query. For example, marathon OR race.
Search for a specific site
Put site: in front of a site or domain. For example, site:youtube.com or site:.gov.
Search for related sites
Put related: in front of a web address you already know. For example, related:time.com.
See Google’s cached version of a site
Put cache: in front of the site address.
Search for phrase with missing words
Put * in place of a missing word in a phrase. For instance, if you’re trying to find the title of the movie “James Bond: Casino Royale” but are only remembering “James Bond Royale”, you can try “James Bond * Royale” to ask Google to fill in the blank. The asterisk is also known as the “wildcard” or “joker” search operator.
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Google Maps user finds the eery remnants of a brutal World War II battle on a remote Alaskan island
In other news, Facebook has announced that it’s changing its name to “Meta”.
The company is working to create lifelike avatars of its users that they can control in a virtual world called the “metaverse”.
Apple’s system that exposes creepy iPhone apps that track your location or snoop on your browsing history has finally arrived.
And, astronomers claim to have spotted the first known planet outside of the Milky Way.
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This post first appeared on Thesun.co.uk
