10 Ways To Seriously Improve Your Google Searches

Use quotes for phrases

Put double quotes around a phrase and the results are limited to just pages with that phrase rather than all the words the phrase contains. For example, "Blue Mountain"

Search just page titles

To find all pages with a word or phrase in its title, prefix the search word or phrase with intitle: For example, intitle:"Blue Mountain"

Search a specific web site

To limit the search to just pages in a particular website, use the insite: prefix before the site address. For example, insite:"nytimes.com"

Search for types of file

You can limit the results to particular types of file using the filetype: prefix. For example, to only find results that have PDFs use the term filetype:pdf

View without visiting

To see Google's cached copy of the page without actually visiting the site add the cache: prefix to a web page address or click the drop down next to the address in the results. For example, cache:www.bbc.com

Exclude words or phrases

Prefixing a search word or phrase with a "-" symbol will exclude all pages containing that phrase from the results. For example, -"Blue Mountain"

Skip abbreviations

By prefixing a word with a "+" symbol this will limit the results to just that word and no potential alternatives or abbreviations. For example, "Blue Mountain" +Vermont would exclude the VA abbreviation for Vermont from the results returned.

Use more words

The more words and phrases you use in your search query, the more specific the results will be. For example, Cary Grant Movies 1960

Go back in time

If you are looking for a web site or page that no longer exists, head over to the Wayback Machine from the Internet Archive which contains copies of web sites from the past. http://archive.org/web

Advanced Search

If playing around with prefixes and symbols isn't for you, go for the Google Advanced Search where a nice form lets you quickly create a complicated search. http://www.google.com/advanced_search