25+ Google Search Tips & Hacks

Today lets take a look at over 25 Google Search Tips/Hacks.

Google is the king of search and here are some interesting facts :

Google has 90.46% of the search engine market share worldwide.

15% of all searches have never been searched before on Google.

Google receives over 63,000 searches per second on any given day.

Google has a market value of $739 billion.

An average person conducts 3–4 searches every single day.

Another interesting fact is that hardly a handful of users use google search to its full potential. So to help users harness the full potential of the Google Search Engine
here are some interesting hacks.
Hope they make your quest for knowledge better.

So here we go…

Search Google with a minus sign (-)

Use the minus (-) Symbol to exclude a term
ex: best video editors -android
This will exclude Android apps from the search results

Search Google using Quotes (“)

Use quotes (“) to include all the search terms
Use quotes (“) to inlude a complete phrase in your search results.
ex: “best hair treatments”
This will include all the search terms, instead of just parts of it, in your search results.

Use Google to search a Single Website

Use site: to get results from one particular website
ex: best photography tips site:tpstr.com
This will fetch results from one particular site instead of the whole web.

Search Page Titles

Use intitle: and allintitle: to search in titles
ex:intitle:yoga or allintitle:yoga poses for backache
This will help you narrow down your search to the article topics with specific words or string of words.

Search for a document on Google Search

Use filetype: to search for a particular filetype like pdf etc
ex: yoga philosophy filetype:doc or yoga philosophy filetype:pdf
This narrows down the search to files that you can download for reference.
The filetypes you can search includes doc, xls, pdf, ppt, txt, rtf etc

Find alternative or Related websites with Google Search

Use related: to find alternative or related websites to the ones you use.
ex: related:amazon.com
This helps you find alternative or related resources to you default websites.
You dont know what you have been missing until you discover it.

Define age of your search

Use &tbs=qdr:XN to refine your search to a particular time.
ex: add &tbs=qdr:XN at the end of a url.
After you have finished searching just edit the url and
add &tbs=qdr:XN where ‘X’ can be y (years), m (months), d (days), h (hours), n (minutes) or s (seconds) and ‘N’ is the number.
For example, adding “&tbs=qdr:y2” to the address shows the results for past 2 years.
Note: You can also use Before: and After: at the end of the query to get results for a specific period ex: linux after:2017 or linux before:2017

Use placeholders in Google Search

Use placeholders (*) to fill in for those words you cant recollect
ex: nothing’s gonna * my love
In the above example the wildcard * will help google fill out the missing term change.
You can use * to fill in for words you cannot recollect.

Find products in a price

Use $,£,€,₹ etc to find a product for a particular price.
ex: phones $100 or Samsung Microwave $500
The currency symbol in the search will help you track articles and products in the particular
price range.you can then click the shopping tab on the search page if you are looking for products.

Find Products in a price range.

Use Double dots (..) to find products in a price range.
ex. phones $100..$500
The Double Dot Operator can be used when you are not sure of a fixed price and have a range in mind.

Use tilde for synonyms

ex: ~tutorials
Use tilde (~) if you are searching for something that is synonymous.
For example if you are searching with ~tutorials the results will include synonyms like reference, manual, guide etc.

Find Local time or currency or measurement value

use Time or Currency Symbol or inch/cm/kg etc to get the values
ex: time New York or $1 or 1kg or 12Inch
The operator like time, $, Kg, Inch etc will get you the conversion in search results.

Find meaning of a word

Use define: to get the meaning of a word
ex: define:malapropism
This helps you get the meaning of a word that you have come acrros and dont know the meaning of.

Use google to solve your math queries

Type in your query to get a solution to your math problems.
ex. sqrt 5 or 88+77+16 or 18% of 233
Google can help you solve basic and complex maths as fast as you can type it in and the speed of your connection.
You can use it for even tan(x)s, cos(x)s etc.

Track topics with google alerts.

go to google.com/alerts to create an alert.
Ex. fill in the form with the topic of your interest.
Google will send you alerts about topics of your interest whenever newer results for your topics appears.
You can also put your name in the alerts list to allow google to send you an alert when your name appears in an article or news.

Discover the Origins of a Word

Use etymology: to discover the origins of a word
ex: etymology:thesaurus
This will help you discover the origins of the word you are seeking to know more about.
This will include the language of the word and its history.

Get Local time

Use time or time city to get the local time for a city.
ex: time or time new york
You can get the correct local time for a city or know whats the time in another country using these operators.

Get Weather for any city

Use weather city to get weather information.
ex: weather or weather new york
This will help you know the current and weekly weather in the desired location.

Get Showtimes for a Movie

Use name of the movie followed by city or pincode
ex: Joker new york or Joker 10001
You can get showtimes for movies at a cinema near you by using the above operator.

Search for flight times

Use the flight number to get schedules and timings for your flight
ex: Indigo 6E-152
Type in airline and flight number to get complete details on the schedules of your flight.

Track your Courier Package

Use the package tracking number to trace your courier.
ex: IN1111WM123456
Just paste the tracking number into google search to track your delivery.

Know Sunrise and Sunset times

Use Sunrise & Sunset to get the Sunrise and Sunset times.
ex: Sunrise & Sunset new york
Use the term Sunrise & Sunset followed by the name of the city you want to know the timings for.

Get details of Tourist spots in your city

Use attractions to get details of must visit places in your city or your intended touring city.
ex: attractions new york
This will help you chalk out a plan to visit all the attractions in a city.

Use Google Search as a stopwatch or countdown timer.

Use “timer” or “set timer to set a timer
ex: timer 30s or timer 1m30s or timer 1hr1m30s
This is handy when you want to be reminded to do something and dont have a watch.

Search Newspaper Archives

Use site:google.com/newspapers to get a copy of the news.
ex: site:google.com/newspapers olympics 2014

Since you have been with us so long, here is another Bonus Tip

View Offline or Banned Wesbites

Use Cache:wesbiteURL
ex: cache:sitename.com
Google keeps a cache of all indexed websites and even those that might be restricted in your country.
The only downside can be is that the cached copy is not current and may have been indexed few days back.

We hope you liked our tips. Don’t forget to visit us again.