About the author:
Hey there!
I’m Nik, 23, and a German student on his way to becoming an entrepreneur – and happy!
Most of all, I believe in 2 things:
1. We all must learn, in order to become happy. 2. Helping others by providing value to their lives.
That means if I can help you learn something today, it’s a double win for both of us!
I hope you enjoy this book as much as I did writing it.
If you have any questions while reading this book, please reach out to me on Twitter, facebook, or shoot me a quick email. If you don’t have any questions, still reach out to me to let me know what you think of it – as Ken Blenchard said: Feedback is the breakfast of champions.
Also make sure to check out my blog, hope to see you there!
About this book:
Today’s world is all about information. Scientific research suggests we spend up to 12 hours per day with media, be it TV, radio, online or print. We are bombarded with information.
The essential skill not only for success, but also for mere survival, then, is filtering information.
Otherwise, the paradox of choice will paralyze us, and we will not only lose the ability to make good decisions, but also the ability to decide at all, which is often even more important.
I can’t tell you how big a part of our lives the internet will go on to become in the future. All I know is: It’s already pretty big, and to be successful, you must know your way around in an online world.
If being able to filter information is the key to success, then that makes googling the skill of the century – and this book will help you master it.
Whether you are starting out and just installed your browser, or a pro Google user already, I promise you will learn something from this guide.
I have been told to be good at finding things on Google repeatedly, and I wrote this book to share this skill with you and do my best to teach it to others. It is meant to guide you.
There is a short introduction, followed by a breakdown of what it takes to become a master user of Google. The process is detailed step by step, with tons of examples, so everyone can understand.
The first step is for beginners. It explains how to come up with good keywords. If you are a newbie, definitely start here. If not, skim through this section, I’m sure you will still find some value in the framework I provided.
The second step is for beginners and advanced users alike. It is a huge collection of Google shortcuts with hands on examples and clever ways how to use them. This is the biggest section of the book and not meant to read in order. I filed the shortcuts into 15 sections, which are:
1. Weather 2. Time and dates 3. Personal information 4. Media 5. Politics 6. Statistics 7. Food 8. History 9. Math 10. Travel 11. Language 12. Sports 2 13. Organizing 14. Biology 15. Random Tidbits
Depending on how much you already know, skim through this section, look at the “what also works” sections at the end of each category, or just pick the categories not familiar to you. You can always come back to this section to look things up, or just learn something new each time you come back to the book.
The third step is for advanced users. This means you should be familiar with all the concepts from step 1 and 2, in order to really get the best of it. Beginners can still profit from the introduction of the different Google platforms and search tools and then slowly make their way into advanced search operators. This is also a section that should not be read in order.
I briefly outline the different Google platforms and search engines:
Google Scholar Google Shopping Google Patents Google Images
Then I show you how to use search tools, followed by the 18 advanced operators
1. The Dash 2. The Quote 3. The Underscore 4. The Asterisk 5. The Two Dots 6. The AND/OR operator 7. The AROUND operator 8. The site: operator 9. The link: operator 10. The related: operator 11. The cache: operator 12. The info: operator 13. The filetype: operator 14. The author: operator 15. The intitle: operator 16. The inurl: operator 17. The intext: operator 18. The inanchor: operator:
Again: Go directly to the operators you need examples for or have trouble understanding, just skim through to get some new ideas or read in one go for the full truck load. I tried to sort them so they go from easy to difficult.
Are you ready? Great! Now come on, I’ll teach you the skill of the century.
3 Disclaimer:
The information contained in this guide is for informational purposes only.
Google continually updates its search engine and adds and removes features. I will try to maintain this guide as best as possible, but I do not guarantee the accuracy of any of the information presented in the guide.
As of 11-10-2014 all searches presented in the guide work. This is version 1.0 of the book.
The material in this guide may include information, products or services by third parties. Third Party Materials comprise of the products and opinions expressed by their owners. As such, I do not assume responsibility or liability for any Third Party material or opinions.
No part of this publication shall be reproduced, transmitted, or sold in whole or in part in any form, without the prior written consent of the author. All trademarks and registered trademarks appearing in this guide are the property of their respective owners.
By reading this guide, you agree that I am not responsible for the success or failure of your decisions relating to any information presented in this guide.
© 2014 Niklas Goeke
4
‘There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.’ – Sherlock Holmes
A few weeks ago my Dad called me into his office. He said he had a computer-related problem.
Now I know what you’re thinking: Haha, those Dad’s and their computer problems, right?
You should know that my Dad is 49 years old and considered an absolute IT genius in his generation. He was around when Pong came out and his Dad’s architecture company bought one of the first available personal computers with a billing management software for their business. Price tag at the time: 20 grand (German Mark). He knows his way around ebay, email, excel, SAP, power point, and even some VBA.
Sometimes though, like we all do, he can’t find the solution to a problem, because it is too simple to even consider.
That day he told me that the links in his Thunderbird had stopped working. Before, when he had clicked on a link in an email, it would open in Firefox. Now when he clicked, nothing happened.
“Can you fix this?”, he asked. “Sure.”, I said, opened Firefox, and by the time I had entered “thunderbird links”, Google’s auto-complete already offered the phrase “thunderbird links won’t open” - and my Dad moaned in the back: “Ugh, of course, I could have thought of this myself”.
2 minutes later his links worked again. It had simply been a matter of adjusting Thunderbird’s permissions as the standard email program.
The obvious fact is that today you can google ANYTHING.
Google is the most powerful tool the internet has to offer, and by using it correctly you can not only thrive and excel in business, but also in life. Not to mention the precious air you save by not having to ask 90% of the questions that pop up inside your brain every day.
5 I know, it’s more comfortable to just ask them anyway or have someone else just give you the solution or google it for you, but comfort is not what we are here for, is it?
Any problem you have, or any information you are looking for, Google either has the answer to it, or can at least point you towards the source that has it.
All you have to do is remember the obvious fact.
You can google ANYTHING.
And while I can’t help you with remembering to use Google - that you will have to do yourself – I can help you with perfecting the way you use it.
Let’s get started by looking at searching itself.
A search for an information is a process.
As with every process, you have one or several inputs and a desired output.
For the case of Google search there are two inputs:
Your input (you must know what you are looking for and how to enter it into google) and Google’s input (index of the web with an automated search algorithm and built-in functions that increase the efficiency of your search).
Your desired output: An information, whether it be in the form of text, audio, video or an image.
Now, what all of us want to do is increase the quality of the output, namely we all want to (ideally always) find what we are looking for when we google.
But how do you do that?
The answer is simple: Increase the quality of the input factors.
Today I will teach you how to tremendously increase the quality of the two Google inputs. Not only will this greatly enhance your understanding of Google and its search, it will also make you the Sherlock Holmes of googling.
Trust me, following this guide, you will find what you are looking for 99% of the time (and only because that last percent is reserved for things you truly cannot find on Google, simply because they are not available online).
I have broken down the process into these three steps:
1. Master how you search 2. Master Google’s built-in Features 3. Master the Art of Focus
Are you ready? Good, let’s get started.
6
The emphasis here is on YOU. The first thing you must learn is how to get from the question you have to what words you must enter into the search bar in order to get the answer you want.
Sometimes there is no step between one and the other. For example, if you wanted to know Lil Wayne’s real name, you could literally enter “What is Lil Wayne’s real name?” and receive this:
Mostly though, this won’t work. Google is not a genie that grants wishes. You have to earn your output. When looking for a certain type of academic paper in a pdf format for example, entering the following into Google is useless:
7
While the result still gets us in the right direction, we could have struck a hole-in-one by heading over to scholar.google.com, Google’s academic literature index, and entering the following:
Right now this example of a search might look abstract and intimidating. Don’t worry about it, we’ll get back to it later. Abstract is a good keyword though.
To improve the wording you choose for your search, you must know how Google values YOUR input. It is a machine after all, and therefore acts on an abstract level.
Google’s search is based on keywords. That means phrasing your search as a question does not increase efficiency. You have to feed Google the right keywords relevant to your search and it will reward you with the right output.
Imagine looking up a word in a dictionary whose index is sorted by questions. Complete chaos!
You want the translation for the word “ketchup” to be under “k” and not somewhere under “w” in “what does ketchup mean in German?” (it’s still ketchup, by the way).
If all you need for a successful search are good keywords, then all you have to do is pick the right keywords from your question. 8 How do you do that though?
First of all: Take some time to do this. The 30 seconds you spend thinking about how you are going to conduct your Google search beforehand might save you 5, 10, or even 20 minutes later, which you would otherwise spend correcting and adapting your search until you find what you are looking for.
The amount of time you think about what keywords to google directly relates to your success rate.
Of course abstracting or generalizing from a question to get keywords is easier for some people than others, but everyone can learn to improve this skill.
I found that abstracting takes place in several ways, all with different difficulty.
Here are the 3 levels of abstracting you can go through to arrive at good keywords from your actual question:
1. Eliminating
This is the easiest one. You try to eliminate everything from your question that is not necessary.
Look at the sentence we formed in the Lil Wayne search. What are the core elements? We need “Lil Wayne”, because that is who we are looking for. We want to know his real name so “real name” is the other bit we really need.
“Lil Wayne real name” would have gotten us the same result as the actual question. Can we go even further? Yes! “Lil Wayne” is obviously not a real name, and we can trust Google to know that too. Therefore, we can also eliminate the “real”. This search was as simple as “Lil Wayne name”.
9 This is something you can practice easily. If you need to, write down your questions every once in a while and try to circle the important words in it.
Most of the time you can cut the entire search down to two keywords.
Don’t be afraid to cut things out. Google is smarter than you think.
To illustrate how well Google can link keywords to one another and fill in the needed context, let’s look at another example.
My question: “Can my dog eat chocolate?”. If you tried to eliminate the unnecessary here, you would most likely arrive at “dog eat chocolate”. But we want two terms, so we need to eliminate one more. What is the only word we can eliminate? Well, we need the “dog” to get information on dogs and the “chocolate” is what we are worried about. Therefore, we have to eliminate “eat”. This is what we get when googling “dog chocolate”:
So no, my dog can’t eat chocolate (neither can yours, by the way).
See how Google did not give us pages of online shops offering special chocolate for dogs they can actually eat or pictures of chocolates in dog-form?
That’s because most people who search for the keywords “chocolate” and “dog” together also want to know whether their dog can eat chocolate. Google has learned this over time and thus presents the results based on the context in which the keywords are linked together in most search cases.
Remember to keep it simple. There is a reason it is the first tip on Google’s own support page.
2. Rephrasing
After you have eliminated all the unnecessary and arrived at your important keywords, rephrasing is the next level. It makes the difference between a good keyword and a GREAT keyword.
Let’s assume I want to know the following: “How much money does Brad Pitt have?”. Upon eliminating my two keywords will be “Brad Pitt” and “money”.
10
Ugh. No number. Something about his earnings from World War Z and Moneyball. That’s a bogey.
So money was probably not a great keyword. Luckily, the search result at least gives me a hint what my keyword should have been: “net worth”.
“Net worth” is a term often used to describe celebrity fortunes, Forbes for example simply lists the net worth figures for the richest people in the world.
By rephrasing “money” into “net worth” we transform a good keyword into a great one, which gets us back on par (or rather a hole-in-one):
11 Rephrasing is the art of picking the version or synonym of your keyword most relevant to the context you are searching it in. In the context of celebrity fortunes the best version of the keyword “money” is “net worth”.
Always try to think of at least 2 ways of phrasing your keywords and then pick the versions most suited to your search’s needs.
3. Inferring
Lastly, the third level on which you can abstract, which is also the most difficult, is inferring. Inferring follows an idea from mathematics and logical reasoning called transitive relations. If you’re a nerd like me, you will LOVE this.
If a number X is larger than Y and Y is bigger than Z, X must also be larger than Z. This principle is what lies behind thousands of conclusions we draw each day and applied to googling can help yield outstanding results.
Inferring simply means you draw conclusions from your keywords on how you can alter or tweak your search to narrow it down decisively. It creates focus. And focus is the ultimate skill when googling, as you will see later.
Enough with the blabla, here’s an example:
If I eliminate and rephrase my very naive search for the academic paper on cancer I might end up with a search like “paper casein cancer campbell”
This leads us to the author’s blog, but not the paper we actually want. How can we use inferring to get to our goal?
Let’s try using a transitive relation. We want an academic paper. Google understood we were looking for an academic setting, since we added the keyword “paper” (the author also helped). But think a little about academic papers. Are they ever just web pages? No. They are almost exclusively in a pdf format.
12 Therefore, if we are looking for an academic paper (X) and academic papers are always in pdf format (Y), that means we need to search for pdf files (Z!).
Boom. Tell me you don’t feel like Sherlock Holmes right now!
Given we know our way a little around Google’s advanced search operators (which we will also cover in full later), we can tweak our search to “filetype:pdf casein cancer campbell”, which leads to the following:
Now that pdf looks promising! Unfortunately it is only an article on the same topic, not the exact academic paper we searched. Google is helping us out again though with the suggestion of scholarly articles.
Remember I said Google Scholar is Google’s index of academic literature?
What Google infers is that if we search for academic papers (X) and Google Scholar is an index based entirely on those (Y), we should search on Google Scholar instead (Z!).
If we click on the link, which simply performs the same search on Google Scholar, we can see th the paper ranked as the 4 result. By adding some more advanced search operators, as in the st introductory example, we can even get it to show up in 1 place.
While inferring is often not necessary to find what you want, it can be extremely powerful and help you get Google to focus on a very narrow set of results.
When you apply it to googling, try this:
13 If I am looking for X and X is:
of filetype Y most likely on site Y definitely not on site Y on a page similar to Y then that means I should search for Z.
This helps you replace keywords with actual search constraints. Inferring done right eliminates millions of search results you don’t want, inevitably leading you to your desired output.
And that’s it! Congratulations! Those are the 3 levels you can work on to improve your choice of keywords and maximize the quality of your search input.
One last thing you should know about punctuation, spelling and grammar: Forget about it. Google ignores almost all of it.
Full stops, commas, colons (unless used in advanced search operators), semi-colons, uppercase spelling, question marks and exclamation marks are all ignored. Spelling mistakes are usually corrected (“did you mean X?”), just like most grammatical errors:
Some symbols trigger advanced search features and you can force Google to include punctuation (which we will cover in step 3), but for the most part you should do what Google does and don’t waste time with punctuation, spelling and grammar.
You now know a good deal about how you should search and how Google values your input.
So now let’s take a look at what Google brings to the table.
14
The second step you have to take is mastering Google’s built-in features. What do I mean by that?
Originally I wanted to name the first step “What you need to search for”. This one would then have been labeled “What you don’t really need to search for”.
Over the years Google has integrated many features that make a lot of actual Google searches redundant.
This means that today you can get a lot of the information you are looking for right in that box below the search bar, as in the Lil Wayne example.
You won’t have to click a single link.
Being able to apply Elimination, Rephrasing and Inferring is essential, but it is no use to come up with a great search phrase in 2 minutes when you could have gotten the required output with a 2 keyword shortcut that takes 5 seconds.
These built-in features are often referred to as “Google Shortcuts”, which is what I will stick to. Whenever Google gives you your result instantly in a small box below the search bar, you know you found a shortcut.
There are hundreds, probably thousands, of articles on the web that show you some of them as the “Top 10 Obscure Google Search Tricks“ or “20 Really Cool Google Features You Probably Don’t Know About“ - and those are great. I’m grateful for all of them.
But I could never find a full list.
So I made one.
After a ton of googling, researching, scanning comments and, of course, tinkering with Google myself, here it is.
Google Shortcuts - a comprehensive list.
Sidenote: I have my Google set to US. While a lot of these do work for Google set to other languages and locations, I like to be up to date. Google’s full potential can only be accessed when using the US version.
Sidenote 2: All browsers now let you search directly from their address bar, which saves you the hassle of calling up Google’s homepage. If you type at a decent speed, these shortcuts will thus 15 literally get you results in under 10 seconds. Therefore, the longest part of your search becomes clicking into your browser’s address bar. You can skip this annoying part with a quick keyboard shortcut: Press Ctrl + L (or Cmd + L, if you are on a Mac like me) and your cursor jumps right into the address bar and you can start typing.
Sidenote 3: I put all the searches in the examples in quotes to make it distinguishable what goes into the search bar, and what doesn’t. That does NOT mean you should always put quotes around your searches. Copy and paste the example, but remove the outer quotes. This should be self- evident from the pictures, but I thought I’d mention it, just to be safe.
1. Weather:
You can find out the weather for your current or any other location for any point between right now and 7 days from now. The simplest shortcut you can use is “weather”.
16 The most elaborate one is along the lines of “weather in seoul next saturday afternoon”.
What also works:
“weather near me” “my weather” “weather in Argentina (gives you the country’s capital’s weather)” “weather in phnom penh” “weather in 02747 (US zip code, also works with German zip codes)” “weather today” “weather tomorrow” “weather the day after tomorrow” 17 “weather next wednesday” “weather next wednesday afternoon” “weather a week from now” “weather forecast” “weather forecast london” “will it rain today” “do i need an umbrella today”
2. Time and dates:
Not only can you find out the time for your or any other location, you can also easily see when sunset and sunrise are, what timezone a certain place is and when clocks are being reset. You can also immediately see when the next season of the year starts and ends and find dates of holidays for any given year. You can even set a timer.
“time”
18 “time in brazil”
“time zone usa”
19 “time zone california”
“sunset sunrise”
20 “summer time”
“winter”
21 “mother’s day”
“set timer 20 minutes”
22 What also works:
“time zone germany” “time zone in 02747″ “time in tokyo” “time in russia” “sunrise in page az” “sunset in croatia” “sunrise 86040″ “easter 2016″ “columbus day 2003″ “set timer 1 hour 30 minutes”
3. Personal information:
You’d be surprised how much information you can get with Google shortcuts on celebrities and people in public light. When you google Brad Pitt, for example, you can see a lot of his info in a box on the right.
23 “brad pitt”
24 But you can also get access to a specific piece of information more directly. A few examples:
“brad pitt siblings”
“brad pitt children”
25 “brad pitt born”
“brad pitt height”
26 “brad pitt movies 2013″
“brad pitt awards”
What also works:
“brad pitt parents” “brad pitt name” “brad pitt spouse” “brad pitt movies (gives you a general overview)” “brad pitt age” “brad pitt old” 27 “brad pitt birthday” “brad pitt birth” “brad pitt net worth”
4. Media:
You can get a TON of information on books, movies and music. It’s not even funny how much Google reveals instantly here. Let’s start with books:
“books 2012″
28 “author shades of grey”
“publisher harry potter”
29 “number of chapters in the bible”
“release date casual vacancy”
30 Now let’s see what we can find concerning movies:
“movies 2016″ gives you all movies scheduled for release in 2016. Of course you can also do this with the present or past years, but I found it interesting that this works for future years as well.
“movies” on the other hand gives you the movies playing in theaters near you.
31 “teenage mutant ninja turtles”
Entering the title of a movie is most often enough. You get the info box on the right as well as the showtimes for the movie in theaters near you.
32 “interstellar trailer” gives you the official trailer on Youtube instantly.
33 “director kill bill”
“ocean’s eleven cast” gets you the entire cast, or at least all the main characters, from the movie.
34 “who plays ted on himym”
Google recognizes characters from TV shows (sometimes even without you mentioning the name of the show) and can guess abbreviations.
Next up: music.
“linkin park albums”
35 “singer hey porsche” gives you the artist of a song in case you just know the song name.
“composer moonlight sonata”
36 “lead singer jackson 5″
“the kooks origin” gives you the location where the band started out originally.
37 What also works:
“author of the bill of rights” “children’s books” “non-fiction books” “thriller movies” “movies 2013″ “teenage mutant ninja turtles cinema” “teenage mutant ninja turtles theater” “teenage mutant ninja turtles release” “love actually length” “movies new bedford” “theaters near me” “cinemas near me” “editor kill bill” “cast of lotr” “who plays walter white” “linkin park latest album” “spice girls awards” “fort minor songs” “release date call of duty: advanced warfare” “books by john grisham”
5. Politics:
You can find out what political system is used where, who holds which office, how long officials have been in office and when the next elections are, as well as when political documents were written and by who (see above).
“political system india”
38 “us elections date”
“secretary of state illinois”
39 “senators washington”
“foreign policy usa”
Sometimes you can even get general information on a country’s standpoint on certain political fields.
40 What also works:
“head of india” (head of will give you the lead political office for any given country, it’s useful when you don’t know what the official term is) “president of usa” “chancellor of germany” “emperor of japan” “queen of uk” “treaty of versailles” “next us elections date” “governor of california”
6. Statistics:
You can get facts & figures on almost anything, from building heights to population sizes, to land areas, to disease statistics, to plant heights.
“highest building”
41 “chrysler building height”
“chrysler building address”
42 “burj al arab phone”
Interestingly you can find out phone numbers for almost all popular buildings, sights and monuments.
“munich size”
43 “population of nigeria”
44 “chicago unemployment rate”
45 “number of french in germany”
“number of people with aids”
46 What also works:
“tallest building in germany” “empire state building opened” (date when it opened to the public) “statue of liberty construction” (date when construction work started) “chrysler building area” “cn tower function” “petronas towers architect” “empire state building floors” “christo redentor artist” “munich area” “population belarus” “size of hawaii” “size of sequoia national park” “size of redwood tree”
7. Food:
Aside from nutritional information you can quickly get recipes, compare products and see what ingredients are used for what dish.
“calories in apple”
47 “vitamin c in lemon”
“protein in eggs” for the fitness geeks.
48 “banana vs mango”
49 “ingredients lasagna”
What also works:
“calcium in peanuts” “cholesterol in eggs” “protein in chicken breast” “carbs in 1 cup pasta” “iron in spinach” “fiber in oats” “pizza vs cupcake”
50 8. History:
Besides the personal information you can get on historical characters, which is similar to the personal information on today’s celebrities, you can also get the dates of important events in history, war locations, leaders and generals involved and nobel prize winners.
“nobel prize winners”
“cold war location”
51 “vietnam war leaders”
“sons henry viii”
52 “greek god wealth”
“storming of bastille date”
53 “caesar death”
What also works:
“vietnam war generals” “pulitzer prize 2013″ “greek gods” “when was caesar emperor” “french revolution date” “declaration of independence signing date” “napoleon nationality” “socrates era” “socrates school” “jurassic period”
9. Math:
On to math! Oh the math you can do with Google. Conversions, calculations, graphs (even 3D in the right browser), learning to spell numbers, deciphering roman numerals, getting tips right and retrieving price information. Here we go!
54 “solve pythagorean theorem”
“area of circle with radius 7″
55 “sqrt (2993/4) to the power of 3″
“17265527 in words”
56 “graph sin(x/pi)”
“tip for $32″
57 “3.57 USD per gallon in EUR per litre”
“1795 in roman”
58 “734 mb in byte”
“10 gallons in liters”
59 “100 f in c”
“8 inches in feet”
60 What also works:
“tip for 47 dollars” “20% tip for $47 for 2 people” “circumference of circle with radius 6″ “solve triangle abc” “solve rhombus” “xviii in numbers” “graph tan x over pi” “7 nautical miles in meters” “1 stone in kg” “60 mph in kmh” “3 acres in sqm” “1 century in milliseconds”
Sidenote: For more advanced stuff like integrals and differential equations, head over to wolframalpha.com
10. Travel:
You can also google about everything you need for travel in an instant. Directions, distances, flight information, finding out the voltage, plug type or utility frequency in another country, sights and events at your destination
61 “take me home”
62 “navigate to cologne”
63 “sights in heidelberg”
“events seattle”
64 “voltage nepal”
“utility frequency japan”
65 “distance nyc to la”
66 “10 dollars in malaysian ringgit”
“flights FRA to SEL”
67 “lh422″
If you know a flight’s number, you can get all the current info on it.
What also works:
“attractions in nyc” “points of interest in munich” “things to do in heidelberg” “directions to cologne” “flights to tokyo” (gives you flights from your nearest airport to another location) “plugs japan” “nearest hospital” “bus new york to boston” “flights from lax to sfo”
68 11. Language:
Regarding languages Google can be of help in a variety of ways. You can not only ask for definitions, synonyms and word meanings, but also instantly translate a variety of phrases and words into a ton of languages.
“origin of word balalaika”
“osteoporosis meaning”
69 “i would like some bread in swahili”
“synonyms amazing”
70 What also works:
“how to say thank you very much japanese” “what does hypertension mean” “define narcissism” “what is mullion” “translate cheese to spanish” “elephant etymology”
71 12. Sports:
You can get information on all kinds of leagues, when the next basketball, ice hockey or football game is, the rosters of the teams, the coaches, their hometown and stadium and of course scores.
“nfl”
Typing in the name of a league gets you an overview of the schedule, when the next games are, etc.
72 “new england patriots arena”
“la lakers”
Typing in the name of a sports team will automatically give you their stats and next game.
73 “new york knicks roster”
What also works:
“new york knicks coach” “broncos score” “pats win” “bruins division” “cricket” “fc barcelona” “next basketball game” “tampa bay rays mascot”
74 13. Organizing:
If you happen to use Google Calendar and Gmail, you can also organize quite a lot using Google directly. You can preview your events and create new ones, or ask for information. Google even finds keywords you used when creating your events.
“create an event dinner with H.W. at 6 PM December 15th”
“when is herbert emmit’s birthday”
75 “when is my breakfast meeting”
“when is my next meeting”
76 “where is my hotel”
What also works:
“what’s my agenda for today” “what’s my agenda for next wednesday” “what’s my agenda for Dec 17″ “show me my flights” “herbert emmit’s number”
77 14. Biology:
Just discovered this. You can find out animal breeds, latin names and species of plants, weights, heights, running speed and lots of other animal and plant information.
“cattle breeds”
“pig weight”
78 “sunflower species”
“rose latin name”
79 What also works:
“pig gestation period” “horse lifespan” “cheetah speed” “yorkshire terrier temperament”
15. Random tidbits:
Lastly, everything that did not fit in anywhere else.
“apple stock” gives you stock prices for any company.
80 “what car brand has 4 circles”
Sometimes asking a straightforward question still works best. It’s also fun to try and mess around.
“symptoms flu”
Disease information can also be seen instantly.
81 “how to convert pdf”
The “how to” keyword often spits out simple step by step instructions for easy processes.
“melting point iron”
There is also information on chemistry.
82 “what is my ip” tells you what your publicly displayed IP address is.
“founder huffington post” gives you the founders of a company.
83 “beats studio vs”
You can use the auto-correct feature to discover alternatives to a product you think of buying. Google will automatically give you the most popular ones.
What also works:
“ip” enter “sounds like” or “better than” to find artists similar to one you like or find alternative products “where’s my package” if you have a confirmed tracking code in your gmail “atomic mass iron” “atomic number helium” “symbol of mercury” “electron configuration aluminum” “how to” sometimes gives you quick instructions. A great term to search in general. “side effects aspirin” “brad pitt friends” gives us info on a cameo he did on the TV show. Sometimes by trying things that you think might work you will discover easter eggs and other random goodies. “what car brand has 4 circles” immediately reveals the Audi logo. Entering questions can work too and is often fun to try. “google trading at” You can also look up products UPC codes, just plug them in and Google will offer a tool for finding the product.
Phew! So there you have it. Google Shortcuts. The full monty.
Knowing only half of this list will save you tremendous amounts of time, because you will not waste it coming up with great phrases to search and keywords for information that is accessible to you instantly. 84 There are many more features Google offers, such as plugins, the built-in apps like the calendar and others. There are also third party plugins that let you scroll infinitely, or make your search more productive in other ways.
I wanted to focus on what you can do manually though, it’s all between you and the search bar.
This list is, while comprehensive, by no means complete.
There are hundreds of shortcuts around and new ones keep popping up daily. Some I discovered by accident, others by targeted research. If you happen to find one that’s not on here, please let me know!
Secret tip: A hint on how you can discover more shortcuts yourself: Whenever you google something, and Google pops up the info box that contains information from Wikipedia or another source on the right, look for all the bold terms. You can usually enter them in combination with your original keyword and immediately get the information as a shortcut.
The info box for “brad pitt” looks like this:
This means I can also enter “brad pitt born”, “brad pitt spouse”, etc. directly and get straight to the information I need. This is the ultimate shortcut, because it is the shortcut to finding shortcuts!
Now that you know what your input must look like and what Google already takes off your hands, isn’t that as good as it gets? No. There is one more thing you must do, in order to truly master Google.
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The last step is mastering the art of focus. After reading this guide so far and applying the knowledge in here I guess you are better at googling than 70% of the people you know. Mastering focus will make you better than 90%.
So what do I mean by focus? In simple words: Narrowing down what the list of results Google returns to you as much as possible. The more focused a search is, the closer all search outputs will be to what you are looking for.
More focus = less searches.
As I mentioned when explaining Inferring, it creates this kind of focus. Inferring is the skill you need to come up with the ideas of how to generate focus for your searches. Now you also need the tools to work these ideas into your actual search request, which I’ll gladly give to you. You must know what operators to enter and what exact platform to search on.
Some of the tools are more general (e.g. using different search engines and settings provided by Google), the more specific ones are often referred to as advanced search operators.
Advanced search operators are like tiny bits of code. They create focus and narrow down your search results by putting constraints on your Google search.
With advanced search operators you can force Google to search for keywords linked together, exclude or include certain web pages, search through URLs and much more. They are the Google commands for pros.
Remember the example with the academic paper? The first one was a bunch of random keywords thrown into Google’s general search. The second one was a very targeted search request using advanced search operators, conducted with Google Scholar, a specific platform. The second search was simply more focused, it made it impossible for Google to return anything but the desired output.
First I will give you an overview of what different platforms Google offers and how you can play around with the search settings to get more focused results. Then I will explain the advanced search operators.
The general tools and advanced search operators are of course also built-in features of Google. What makes them different from the shortcuts, is the required effort on your part. Shortcuts are for anybody, you don’t need specific knowledge and you won’t have to click anything to get to them. All you have to do is shape your search bar input in a certain way and you will trigger them. The tools in this chapter you must be aware of beforehand to even be able to apply them.
86 That’s what sets the two categories apart and that’s what makes the difference between you being the Sherlock Holmes of googling instead of just Watson.
Let’s begin by introducing a few different platforms.
Google Scholar:
Not only Google’s index of academic papers, it also has a law database. It can help you find precedent cases for certain crimes, as an example.
87 Google Shopping:
What used to be “Froogle” Google’s consumer products search. This is more specific than when you just use the regular Google search to find products.
Google Patents:
Google also has a special section for browsing patents. You can find the original patents for the telephone and other inventions, but also see what advancements have been made with the induction charger (or the hoverboard). 88
Google Images:
This is sometimes referred to as reverse image search. You can upload a picture and search for it, or even take URLs of pictures online (even facebook and other social media, if they are public) to get information on it. You can also search other versions of the same picture.
89 This tool is incredibly powerful.
Other clever uses:
Put in pictures from facebook that advertise events to get more info on the actual event. Check if pictures from online dating sites are real or fake. Download pictures from facebook or twitter and reupload them to find out more about people and locations. If the same person in a picture has more pictures up online, Google will likely find them. Upload a wallpaper of a city, car, or person and immediately find out the name of it. This you can use to search the picture of an actor, whose name you don’t know, for example, to find more of his or her movies. Upload a picture of your food at a restaurant to get similar dishes and more ideas what to cook at home. See a cool piece of clothing or furniture online? Plug it in and chances are Google will tell you the name.
This concludes the section of explicitally spun off sub-engines and platforms of Google. But there are also ways to boost focus using the tabs displayed under the search bar when doing a regular search. One of the tabs for specifiying settings is called “search tools”. Since it makes sense to use it in combination with the other tabs in 99% of all cases, this is what I will call the following section.
Search Tools:
If you are an attentive and aware person, by now you should have noticed the multiple tabs under the search bar. If not, look at almost every example in this book and be horrified.
These let you search in different categories and adjust search parameters like time, relevancy, sorting behavior etc.
Images:
Since we were just speaking of images: Of course you can not only trace images backwards, but also find images right off the bat. But hey, it’s 2014, who am I telling this?
Don’t underestimate Google’s regular image search though, it has also become much more powerful than it used to be. Under search tools, you can specify a lot of things and be very specific about what types of images you want. You can search for clip arts, certain colors, different sizes, and much more. I will give you some practical examples.
90 By setting the “type” parameter accordingly, you can search faces and thus explicitly look for people:
This search shows you the faces behind Google and the early adopters of Google Glass.
You can also use it to search images labeled for reuse (under usage rights), that you can freely use on your website. This way you could find a download button, if you want to include one in a blog post.
91 In case you are doing charity work, you can also search for images labeled for noncommercial reuse. Assuming you need the image of a fountain for the website of your charity supplying water, try this:
Besides using the “type” parameter to find faces, there are a few other clever things you can do.
Find ideas for drawing, by setting it to “line drawing”, if you are an artist:
92 This parameter can also give you step by step instructions, e.g. for fitness exercises:
Or find coloring pictures for your kids:
Pick “animated” to find funny GIFs and memes, or quick life- or cooking hacks:
93 Now here’s a really tricky one. Consider the “color” parameter. Doesn’t seem to make too much sense at first sight, but this can help you greatly expand your results.
Suppose I want a picture of chocolate cake with strawberries. One way to go is to just type it in:
If I am not happy with the results, though, I can do the following: Drop “strawberries” from the search and switch the “color” setting to red.
This gives me a set of almost entirely new results, even if some now also contain raspberries.
94 Other clever uses:
Go to size, “larger than”, and pick 4MP to find beautiful DSLR photographs. Use size, pick “exactly” and enter the size you need. My header images are usually 1500x700, so I could find some using this. Set color to “transparent” to find images which you can use for collages and easily add to your own images.
Videos:
Youtube is not the only place to find videos. As a matter of fact, using Google can often be more efficient, since it includes Youtube in its search, but also scans other platforms, such as Vimeo, Metacafé and others.
You can find entire movies, especially documentaries, by setting search to video and then choose length over 20 minutes:
Other clever uses:
Search for music videos by choosing Vimeo (and sometimes high quality). This often leads to music videos you cannot find in Youtube, or only in horrible quality there. Find interviews with people.
95 News:
Bloggers often create valuable content. Whether you are a blogger, checking out the competition, or just hungry for news, try this:
Set the category to “blogs” (where it says “all news”) and then choose the past 24 hours. Let’s you stay on top of your topic.
There is also a URL hack you can use, which is especially good for news search:
96 See how it says “past 10 minutes”? That setting is not available from the get-go. Here’s how to do it: Do your regular search, then change the time setting in any way. This will add “&tbs=qdr:h” to your URL. The “h” is for hour. You can change this parameter as follows:
s10 for the past 10 seconds n37 for the past 37 minutes (m is for months) h96 for the past 96 hours d12 for the past 12 days m10 for the past 10 months y7 for the past 7 years
You get the hang of it.
Regular search:
Besides being able to base search around specific times and locations for regular searches, there are only 2 interesting things you can do under search tools here. If you go to “all results” you will see different options. Choosing “visited pages” is like browsing through your Google history, while “not yet visited” excludes the pages you have been on before.
“Reading level” is where it gets interesting. Choose this option to see how much of the results is basic, how much is intermediate, and how much advanced. You can then choose the level you want results from:
In the advanced section on “prime numbers” we find a lot of academic research websites and math forums, which go into much more detail than the basic explanations found otherwise.
This is also a good indicator of how complex your keywords are. The more advanced results, the more complex the topic.
The last interesting tweak here is the “verbatim” search. This removes a lot of Google’s automated features and does an exact word search. You won’t get personalized results from 97 websites in your history, no synonyms, no spelling corrections, no words with the same stem and no similar terms. It’s as if you put qotes around all of your keywords.
An example: Let’s say you are looking for a vinyl fence. Of course you are smart and think: “Hey, if I could find offers that spelled the name wrong, then maybe I could get one at a cheaper price!”. You then type in “vynyl fence”, but of course, Google corrects it to “vinyl fence” and sends you straight to Home Depot.
Now you go to search tools, click on “all results” and then “verbatim”. Now Google returns this:
Bingo! Ebay classifieds and some results from Alibaba.com. This is also a very useful feature for journalists and bloggers.
98 Other clever uses:
Search for titles of books, historic pieces, and articles in Old English spelling. Find complex terms that have a slightly different spelling than another word, but an entirely different meaning (like “parole”, it will otherwise be changed to “parol”). Get information on food without getting restaurant and fast food offers from your area.
This concludes the overview of the different platforms and general features, so now, without further ado, let’s take a deep dive into advanced search operators.
1. The Dash:
“-”
The dash, or minus sign, if you will, does what you would expect it to: remove search results. You can exclude keywords or certain sites.
Example:
Suppose I pass by my Korean neighbors every other day and I want to know what breed that yellow dog is I see them with all the time.
“dog breed yellow” yields a ton of search results for labradors. I know what a labrador looks like though, and their dog is definitely not a labrador. So let’s exclude that from the search.
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So now none of the search results may include labrador. Aha! A Nureongi. A Korean dog breed, what a coincidence :)
Sidenote: There used to be a + operator as well to force include keywords. This has been changed a while ago. You can still use it to search blood types and (apparently) Google Plus pages. I found even this questionable. The results when using the “+” operator tend to be a little more oriented towards social media than when searching without it, but I could not discover a particular focus on Google+. If you ask me, you should forget about this operator.
Other clever uses:
“salsa recipe -tomatoes” if you want to make salsa but have no tomatoes left at home. “jaguar -car” if you are looking for the animal, not the car.
2. The Quote:
“”
Quotes force Google to search a full phrase, not look for the individual keywords in it.
100 Example:
I just heard a rap song on the radio in my car, and now I want to find it. All I remember is the line “very influential for those who have potential”.
Something about marketing and chemistry. Ugh. Adding quotes helps tremendously for this (of course adding the keyword “lyrics” does also):
101 There we go! Adding quotes also forces Google to include punctuation, but only some of it. When googling “www.google.com” you can see the full stops being bolded, which they aren’t when googling the URL without quotation marks. Other punctuation you can force Google to include:
percentage sign % dollar sign $ forward slash / at symbol @ (mostly used for twitter accounts) hash symbol # (mostly used for twitter tags)
This was taken and updated from here.
Sidenote: You can and should combine multiple operators whenever you can. The more restrictions the better. I will also use this in the examples.
Other clever uses:
“elijah wood movies -“lord of the rings”” “crazy, stupid, love” -torrent (if I don’t want any torrent downloads popping up) “only two things are infinite” (you can find quotes easily) “calculate the formula mass for each of the following compounds” (you can Google questions from textbooks exactly as they are to find answers) find ebooks or where you can buy books online, that are very specific, such as children’s books or niche books (by googling the exact title) if you see someone reading out something, memorize a phrase and google it, to find the document the person was quoting from find people with their full names
3. The Underscore:
“_”
The underscore combines 2 searches into one. If you connect two keywords with it, it will search for the 2 keywords separately, as well as their connection, be it through a dash, underscore, or as one word.
102 Example:
Other clever uses:
Can be used to find methods in lines of code e.g. “bubble_sort”. A good operator in general when looking for coding bits.
4. The Asterisk:
“*”
The asterisk acts as a wildcard and is replaced by Google with literally anything. It’s great when you only have partial information, or want suggestions.
103 Example:
Consider again the lyrics example. What if I didn’t catch all of that phrase? No problem, the asterisk helps.
Here’s another one. If I really like Oprah and I want to find interviews where she states her opinion (about anything), I can search something like this:
104 Combining the asterisk with auto-complete is also a great idea. Enter something you need suggestions for, and then replace one of the words with an asterisk, to get even more suggestions.
Other clever uses:
“i can accept *” helps you find a Michael Jordan quote. Just as with lyrics, you can also search for quotes when you only know a part of them. “swim*” gives you everything from swimming, to swimmer, to swim. This way you can search verbs, adjectives, nouns all at once and find more things on one topic.
5. The Two Dots:
“..”
The two dots let you determine a range of years or numbers, for example.
Example:
I want to find out what the billboard charts looked like in the 90s.
105 Other clever uses:
“headphones $50..100″ gives you only headphones in the $50-100 range.
6. The AND/OR operator:
“AND” or “OR”
This lets you search for two keywords simultaneously, but not necessarily in exact order, as with the quotes. You can also search for alternatives or when you can replace something.
Example:
“”dark chocolate” AND “white chocolate”” gives you pages where both are mentioned, this is also good for comparisons.
106 “hot chocolate OR cocoa -band -run” gives you two favored recipes that just name the drink differently. You have to exclude the band and the run (takes place in Chicago every year) though.
Sidenote: You can also use this to search for synonyms with OR, but you will have to look them up first. The tilde operator “~” was used for this before, but it was discontinued in June 2013.
Sidenote 2: The OR operator can be replaced with the vertical bar, which is Shift+\ on Mac and Windows respectively.
Other clever uses:
“boston AND cinema OR movie theatre OR movie theater” combines them both, which is useful for finding all variants of a word.
7. The AROUND operator:
“AROUND(n)”
This is a good one. It lets you search for multiple words within a certain range of each other.
107 Example:
Let’s say I want to find out how I can clean my car or where I can have it cleaned.
This search gives me a German car cleaning company (I am in Germany so that’s fine) and a list of tips how I can clean my car. The search looked for “clean”, “cleaning”, “cleaner” etc. in all variants, within 5 words of the word “car”.
Other clever uses:
“swim* AROUND(5) teach*” gives you results for “swimming”, “swim”, “swimmer” etc. combined with “teach”, “teaching”, “teacher” etc. to help you find a swimming teacher or a website where you get taught.
8. The site: operator:
“site:”
This might be the best one of them all. “site:” followed by a webpage restricts all results to that webpage. It means you can search entire archives and gigantic blogs and resources for your desired output.
108 Example:
Just like Noah Kagan, I like tacos. And my guess is a lot of other people do too. So someone probably already investigated where to get the best tacos. Where do people talk about tacos? Reddit, for example.
Haha, it appears the best taco stands are in Houston, TX, Noah’s hometown. Lucky you, Noah!
Other clever uses:
“site:reddit.com free “wordpress themes”” shows you lists on reddit of free WordPress themes. You can actually use this operator to get TONS of free stuff. “site:audible.com $0.00” gets you free audiobooks. “how to use a lawn mower -site:ehow.com -site:wikihow.com” gives you instructions but excludes the go-to sites to help you find more uncommon results.
9. The link: operator:
“link:”
This operator lets you find pages that link to the page specified. This is great for bloggers, it lets them find out who links to their site, or who links to stuff similar to their own so they can contact these people about new content.
109 Example:
I have a post on minimalism on my blog. I really enjoy reading The Minimalists. This search helps me find other people, who have linked to their stuff as well, and therefore might be interested in mine.
Other clever uses:
“link:http://lifehacker.com/top-10-clever-google-search-tricks-1450186165″ lets you find other articles that refer to this article.
10. The related: operator:
“related:”
This operator shows you sites that are either directly related to the specified page (i.e. owned by the same person) or talk about the same topic and are popular.
Example:
110 Other clever uses:
Combined with whois this is a powerful of discovering what set of webpages belongs to a single individual.
11. The cache: operator:
“cache:”
This operator gives you Google’s cached version of a web page. Sometimes things are removed and with this you can still access them a while after the upgrade.
Example:
Other clever uses:
“cache:tailopez.com investing” highlights the term investing on the cached page. This way you can immediately search the cached version of a site.
12. The info: operator:
“info:”
This combines the above 4 into one, gives you general information about a web page and then lets you decide what you want to do.
Example:
111 13. The filetype: operator:
“filetype:”
As seen before, this serves to specify a certain filetype one requires, such as .mp3 or .pdf, or any other format.
Example:
If I was looking for articles published in magazines by Peter F. Drucker (read Managing Oneself, in case you haven’t!), this is what I would look for.
Other clever uses:
“filetype:pdf author:campbell intitle:cancer casein” was the search we used to get us that academic paper we wanted. “filetype:midi piano” to find the rare MIDI filetype used for recording piano song tutorials. “filetype:mp4 "linkin park"” gives you music videos of the band.
14. The author: operator:
“author:”
This limits the search results to a certain author, but only works in Google Scholar.
112 Example:
As seen before:
15. The intitle: operator:
“intitle:” or “allintitle:”
As above, this is great when looking for keywords in titles of written pieces. But you can also use it in general search. It is then used to limit results to pages whose title tag includes the word you are looking for.
Example:
I want freebies! But how do I get them? Well, I want to look up pages that are really dedicated to showing me how and where to get freebies. And only really dedicated websites put the word “freebies” into their title tag.
113 Other clever uses:
“allintitle:comfort zone” does the same for multiple keywords. All of them must be contained in the title then. The two variants with “in” and “allin” are also possible for the next operators.
16. The inurl: operator:
“inurl:” or “allinurl:”
The same as above, only this time the keyword must even be in the URL. Great when looking for specific blog posts.
Example:
Maybe I have to use a proxy. Google helps me find a free one.
Other clever uses:
“-inurl:(htm|html|php) intitle:"index of" "last modified" "parent directory" description size (mpg|wmv|mp4|mov) "chapelle"” is an advanced hack and produces videos of comedian Dave Chapelle. It removes standard websites and only looks for FTP directories, which typically have the used terms in their title. Based on a an outdated search found here, that I updated to the current standard. “allinurl:free ebooks” shows you web pages that specifically list free ebooks.
17. The intext: operator:
“intext:” or “allintext:”
Now all the keywords must be in the text of the page that is searched.
114 Example:
This is useful for getting high quality information on complicated topics.
18. The inanchor: operator:
“inanchor:” or “allinanchor:”
Very few people know about this one. Even less people know what it actually does. I’ll try to explain simply: The anchor is the text of a page that contains the link to another page. Searching with this operator means the keywords are not necessarily on the web page from the results, but in the text of pages that links to the result page. This usually means the content of the result is of high quality, since a lot of other people link to it with your keywords.
115 Example:
Googling “cooking hacks” gives me several results, including an article on 17 cooking hacks I can learn in 6 seconds. When I google with “allinanchor:” though, this disappears and I am left with a superior post (that also popped up before) about 40 cooking hacks.
This indicates that the 17 cooking hacks post is inferior and I can do without it. I checked the shares on social media, and the 40 cooking hacks post has way more, which not decisively confirms, but is a good indicator, that this is true.
And that’s it! Here we are! If you have made it all the way to here, then I have nothing to say but:
Congrats!
You can now officially call yourself “Sherlock Holmes of googling”, maybe get some new business cards?
Now go out, apply this knowledge, memorize it and may you always find what you are looking for.
I hope you found value in this and learned something new. If you did, please spread the word, so others can learn the skill of the century too! You can do so by sharing this article on social media:
The Google Guide Part 1
I am also happy to receive any feedback, positive or critical, you can find me on multiple channels here, or just reach out to me via email.
Stay awesome, but leave your comfort zone and remember: You can google ANYTHING! 116 Photo credits:
Image used in section header images: Search designed by Rediffusion from the Noun Project
Image used in cover image: Sherlock Holmes designed by Miroslav Koša from the Noun Project
Custom graphics created with Picmonkey
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