Amp Up Your Google Search!

You may be familiar with how to use Google to search. Some common search techniques include:

1. Simply putting a word or words in the search field - Google will try to return links to pages that contain all those words.
2. Putting those same words in "double quotes" - Google will try to return results with those exact words, and in that exact word order.
3. Put a hyphen or minus sign before any word you do not want to have included in your search results. Google will delete results that contain that word.

Did you know...

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Google lets you focus your search much more tightly. Here are just a few of the special search operators you can use:

1. Put the word OR (in capital letters) or use the pipe symbol between the words you're searching for. What you type in the search field looks like term1 OR term2 (looks like term1|term2 when using the pipe symbol), and your results will contain pages that contain either term1 or term2 - or both :)
2. Put two periods between numbers when you'd like your search to return results with a number between those numbers - whether a date range or a price range, or whatever. An example of what you'd put in the search field is (2013..2015)
3. Put the tilde symbol (~) before a word to tell Google to return results that have that word in the results - and to return results that have synonyms for the word you specified in the search results.

Enough with the Geek Speak!!

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You may not want to learn all the bits and pieces needed to hone your search results - there are dozens of them!

Google offers an advanced search page at https://www.google.com/advanced_search that handles the special codes for many of their advanced operators. Just fill in the blanks, and cut Google loose. There's even a similar site for advanced image searches on Google - check it out at https://www.google.com/advanced_image_search

... and a quick warning :\

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Just be aware that Google zealously guards it's advanced search operators. You may see a Google CAPTCHA when you're searching. Just fill it out and move on!

Focus your search results and save yourself from having to cull through dozens of results that are unrelated to your search. If you'd like to hone your search still further, check out the comprehensive list of advanced Google search operators at http://www.googleguide.com/advanced_operators_refe...

Now go forth and Google!

Dennis