Google Search Tips

Here are some search syntax basics and advanced tricks for Google.com. You might know most of these, but if you spot a new one, it may come in handy in future searches.

• A quote/ phrase search can be written with both quotations ["like this"] as well as a minus in-between words, [like-this].

• Google didn’t always understand certain special characters like [#], but now they do; a search for [C#], for example, yields meaningful results (a few years ago, it didn’t). This doesn’t mean you can use just any character; e.g. entering [t.] and [t-] and [t^] will always return the same results.

• Google allows 32 words within the search query (some years ago, only up to 10 were used, and Google ignored subsequent words). You rarely will need so many words in a single query – [just thinking of such a long query is a hard thing to do, as this query with twenty words shows] – however, it can come in handy for advanced searching... especially as a developer using the Google API.

• You can find synonyms of words. E.g. when you search for [house] but you want to find “home” too, search for [~house]. To get to know which synonyms the Google database stores for individual words, simply use the minus operator to exclude synonym after synonym (they will always show as bold in the SERPs, the search engine result pages). Like this: [~house -house -home -housing -floor].

• To see a really large page-count (possibly, the Google index size, though one can only speculate about that), search for [* *].

• Google has a lesser known “numrange” operator which can be helpful. Using e.g. [2000..2005] (that’s two dots inbetween two numbers) will find 2000, 2001, 2002 and so on until 2005.

• Google’s define-operator allows you to look up word definitions. For example, [define:css] yields “Short for Cascading Style Sheets” and many more explanations. You can trigger a somewhat “softer” version of the define-operator by entering “what is something”, e.g. [what is css].

• Google has some exciting back-end AI to allow you to find just the facts upong entering simple questions or phrases like [when was Einstein born?] or [einstein birthday] (the answer to both of these queries is “Albert Einstein – Date of Birth: 14 March 1879”). This feature was introduced April this year and is called Google Q&A. (See some of the various working Q&A sample queries to get a feeling for what’s possible.)

• Google allows you to find backlinks by using the link-operator, e.g. [link:blog.outer-court.com] for this blog. The new Google Blog Search supports this operator as well. In fact, when Google’s predecessor started out as Larry Page’s “BackRub” in the 1990s, finding backlinks was its only aim! However, not all backlinks are shown in Google today, at least not in web search. (It’s argued that Google does this on purpose to prevent reverse-engineering of its PageRank algorithm.)

• Often when you enter a question mark at the end of the query, like when you type [why?], Google will advertise its pay-for-answer service Google Answers.
• There a “sport” called Google Hacking. Basically, curious people try to find unsecure sites by entering specific, revealing phrases. A special web site called the Google Hacking Database is dedicated to listing these special queries.

• Google searches for all of your words, whether or not you write a “+” before them (I often see people write queries [+like +this], but it’s not necessary). Unless, of course, you use Google’s or-operator. It’s an upper-case [OR] (lower-case won’t work and is simply searching for occurrences of the word “or”), and you can also use parentheses and the “|” character. [Hamlet (pizza | coke)] will find pages containing the word (or being linked to with the word) “Hamlet” and additionally containing at least one of the two other words, “pizza” or “coke”.

• Not all Google services support the same syntax. Some services don’t allow everything Google web search allows you to enter (or at least, it won’t have any effect), and sometimes, you can even enter more than in web search (e.g. [insubject:test] in Google Groups). The easiest thing to find out about these operators is to simply use the advanced search and then check what ends up being written in the input box.

• Sometimes, Google seems to understand “natural language” queries and shows you so-called “onebox” results. This happens for example when you enter [goog], [weather new york, ny], [new york ny] or [war of the worlds] (for this one, movie times, move rating and other information will show).