Google Search Tips and Tricks

Google Search can help you be efficient with your time in and outside the classroom, allowing you to focus on what’s important – the students’ learning. There are some tips and tricks to help you make your searches even more efficient. They can help you save time and get relevant results according to your needs.

Check them out:

1.  Don’t worry about spelling or capitalization. Google's spell checker automatically uses the most common spelling of a given word, whether or not you spell it correctly and the search is not case-sensitive.  
2. Dictionary. Put define: in front of any word to get its definition. 
3. Search with an exact phrase. Put quotation marks around words to search for an exact phrase in an exact order. Keep in mind that searching with quotes might exclude relevant results. A search for "Alexander Bell" is different from a search for "Alexander G. Bell". 
4. Include or ignore words and characters. Highlight common words and characters such as the and & if they are essential to your search by putting quotation marks around them. You can also use the minus - sign to specify particular words or sites you don't want in your results. This is useful for words with multiple meanings, like Jaguar the car brand and jaguar the animal. 
5. Search within a specific site. Precede you search with site: if you if you are looking up something within a specific site or type of site (.org, .edu). For example: site:edu or site:nytimes.com.   
6. Search by file type. Search for specific types of files, such as PDFs, PPTs, or XLS, by adding filetype: and the 3-letter file abbreviation.  
7. Find related pages. To find pages that have similar content type related: followed by the website address. For instance, if you find a website you like, try using related:www.site.com to locate similar websites.  
8. Similar terms. Get results including synonyms by placing the ~ sign in front of your search term.  
9. Collocation. Add an asterisk within a search as a placeholder for any unknown or wildcard terms. Use with quotation marks to find variations of that exact phrase or to remember words in the middle of a phrase. Example: "a * saved is a * earned". This is also a brilliant way to find song lyrics if you don’t know all the words.
10.  Voice search. Click the  microphone icon in the Google app or Chrome's search box to search by voice.

Note: When you search using symbols, don't add any spaces between the symbol and your search terms.

I hope you have some fun trying out these tricks! Do not hesitate to share these with your students as well, they will certainly profit from them.