Search on search engines like Google seems easy. However, most users do not know how to do it and do not always use the advanced features of search engines to refine their searches. They are usually limited to typing a sentence or keywords on Google, while it is possible to obtain more relevant results in the first lines. Instead of getting hundreds of thousands or even millions of results, you can get a more relevant URL list that will make it easier to find the user without wasting time. To become a Google search pro at the office especially if you have to prepare a reportHere are some tips to consider.

Using quotation marks to refine your search

Google takes into account several symbols or operators that can refine its search. These operators operate on the classic engine, Google Images and other variations of the search engine. Among these operators, we note the quotation marks. A quoted phrase is a good way to search for a precise wording.

Consequently, the results obtained will be those containing exactly the terms entered in quotes. This process allows you to type not only one or two words, but also a whole sentence, for example “how to write a meeting report“.

Excluding words with the "-" sign

Adding a dash is sometimes necessary to explicitly exclude one or two terms from the search. To do this, we precede the term or terms to ban from a dash or minus sign (-). By excluding one word from his search, the other word is put forward.

If you want to find web pages talking about end-of-year seminars, for example, which do not at the same time talk about colloquia, just type “end-of-year seminars - colloquium”. It is often annoying to search for information and get thousands of irrelevant results because of a namesake. The dash thus avoids these cases.

Adding words with "+" or "*"

Conversely, the "+" sign allows you to add words and give more weight to one of them. This sign makes it possible to obtain results common to several different terms. Also, if in doubt about the search, adding an asterisk (*) allows you to perform a special search and fill in the blanks of your query. This technique is convenient and effective when you are unsure of the exact terms of the request, and it works in most cases.

By adding the asterisk after a word, Google will bold the missing word and replace the asterisk with it. This is the case if you search for "Romeo and Juliet", but you have forgotten a word, then it will suffice to type "Romeo and *", Google will replace the asterisk by Juliet which it will put in bold.

The use of "or" and "and"

Another very effective tip to be a pro in Google search is to search using the "or" ("or" in French). This command is used to find two items without excluding either and at least one of the two terms must be present in the search.

The "AND" command inserted between two terms will display all the sites containing only one of the two. As a Google search pro, you should know that these commands can be combined for more precision and relevance in the search, the one not excluding the other.

Finding a particular file type

To find out how to become pro Google search in order to quickly find a file type, you must use the search command "filetype". In most cases, Google gives results from the top ranked sites among the first results. However, if we know exactly what we want, we can choose to display only a specific type of file to make the task easier. To do this, we will put "filetype: the keywords and the type of format sought".

In the case of a search for a PDF file on the presentation of a meeting, we will start by typing "meeting presentation filetype: pdf". The advantage with this command is that it does not display websites, but only PDF documents on its search. The same process can be used to search for a song, picture or video. For a song for example, you must type "title of the song filetype: mp3".

Special search by images

Searching by image is a Google function that is little known to Internet users, yet it is very useful. A special section is available on Google for searching for images, this is Google Images. It is not a question here of entering a keyword and adding "image" afterwards, but of uploading a photo from your computer or tablet to see if similar images appear on Google, to compare images. images by searching on URL.

The search engine will display the sites containing the image in question and will also indicate similar images found. This functionality is useful to know the size, the sources of an image, to date with more or less precision the setting on line of this one.

Search a website

There is a way to find information you need on a site. This makes it possible to limit the search to only one site. This operation is possible by typing "site: sitename". By adding a keyword, we easily obtain all the information related to your keyword present on the site. The absence of a keyword in the request makes it possible to view all the indexed pages of the site in question.

Customize Google's search results

You can customize your results on Google News to view a country-specific edition. You can customize your edition by activating the custom edition via the link at the bottom of the site. You can customize the Google News display by choosing one of the possible modes (one-time, modern, compact and classic), customize the themes by adding local news topics.

You can also adjust Google News sources by indicating your favorite and least favorite sites. It is also possible to customize the search parameters. As another tip to becoming a Google pro, you can adjust the SafeSearch filters to filter out sexual or offensive content.

To accelerate the search on the search engine, activate the instant search, adjust the number of results per page (ranging from 10 results per page to 50 or 100 results per page), open the results in a new window, block some sites, change the default language, or include multiple languages. By customizing the search parameters, you can also modify the geolocation by choosing a city or a country, an address, a postal code. These settings influence the results and display the most relevant pages.

Get help from other Google tools

Google offers several tools that facilitate research such as:

Define, an operator that provides the definition of a word without the need to go through Wikipedia. Just type " define: word to define And the definition is displayed;

Cache is an operator that allows you to view a page as it is saved in the Google cache. (cache: sitename);

Related allows you to add a URL after the command to identify similar pages (related: google.fr to discover other search engines);

Allintext is useful for searching a term in the body of a site by excluding the title of the page (allintext: search word);

allinurl is a feature that allows you to search the URLs of web pages and Inurl, intext, allow you to search for a complete sentence;

Allintitle and intitle allow you to search in the titles of pages with the “title” tag;

Stocks serves to track the course of a company's stock price by typing stocks: name of the company or the code of its share ;

Info is a tool that allows you to get information about a site, access that site's cache, similar pages and other advanced searches;

Weather is used to find out the weather forecast for a city or region (weather: Paris allows you to find out what the weather is like in Paris;

Map displays the map of a locality;

Inpostauthor is an operator of Google Blog Search and is dedicated to research within blogs. It allows to find a blog article published by an author (inpostauthor: author's name).

Inblogtitle is also reserved for searching within blogs, but it limits the search to blog titles. Inposttitle limits the search to the titles of blog posts.

Get more information about the search engine

There is a lot of information on the web and it is not always easy to know how to get it. Yet a Google search pro directly type the query corresponding to its search and access sites public data such as GDP, mortality rate, life expectancy, military spending. It is possible to turn Google into a calculator or converter.

So to know the result of a mathematical operation, just enter this operation in the search field and start the search. The search engine supports multiplication, subtraction, division and addition. Complex operations are also possible and Google allows to visualize mathematical functions.

For those who want to convert a unit of value such as speed, distance between two points, currency, Google supports many systems and currencies. To convert a distance for example, simply type the value of this distance (20 kilometers for example) and convert it to another unit of value (in miles).

To know the time of a country for a videoconference, for example, you just have to type the query + time + name of the country or of the main cities of this country. Likewise, to be aware of the flights available between two airports, you must use the "flight" command to enter the departure / destination cities. The "flight" command will display the companies chartered at the airport, the schedules of the different routes, the flights to and from the destination.

Good luck………