Google Search Hacks: How to Use Quotation Marks, Hyphens, and More to Find Things on Google

Isabella James, Tech Times 03 August 2021, 01:08 am

Have you ever gone on Google Search to find websites on a pretty specific topic and the search results ended up being not what you needed? It can be quite a hassle when the seemingly all-knowing Google Search does not give you what you are looking for.

There are things you can do to help Google find the right pages you are looking for. You can add certain characters to your search query or even use the options on Google Search to your advantage.

Here is a list that puts together all the Google Search tips and tricks that you need to know:

Google Search Hacks: Use Punctuations

(Photo : Pixabay/Firmbee)
Google Search

One of the most important Google Search Hacks you need to know is how to use different punctuations to help Google out. An article by PCMag lists down the punctuations you can include when you type in your search query.

Quotation marks ("") - Use quotation marks when you want Google Search to generate rules containing the words you enter in the exact order. For example, if you search for "BTS Butter music video," the search results will have those words in that order.

Hyphen (-) - Otherwise known as the minus sign for some people, you can put a hyphen when you want Google Search to exclude results with certain words that you do not want to see. An example would be "NFT -cryptocurrency," which will yield results about NFT but omit those that mention cryptocurrency.

Other punctuations you can use to refine your search include:

Colon (:) - The colon can be used to find results in a specific website. An example would be "Elon Musk site:techtimes.com," which will yield pages published on Tech Times.

Tilde (~) - A tilde can be used if you want Google Search to find synonyms of a keyword. As an example, searching for "blue ~sneakers" will also include results for shoes, kicks, and the like.

Two periods (..) - Include two periods in your search when you want results in a specific range of numbers. Searching for "Taylor Swift albums 2010..2019" will show all of the singer's albums released during that time frame.

Google Search Hacks: Using What Google Search Has

Some of the most useful Google Search hacks actually involve knowing how to properly use Google Search, its options, and other features, as shown by the suggestions on Lifehack.

Using the tabs provided can seem so simple, but can actually help a lot when you are looking for specific formats such as images or videos, or certain kinds of articles like news.

If you're looking for search results that are recent (or even the other way around), you can set time restraints on Google Search. For example, opting for "Past 24 hours" will only give you websites that published articles and the like within the past day.

If you want to get rid of your search history for one reason or another, Google Search lets you delete your history as well.

Other Google Search Hacks

Did you know that you can use Google Search to solve certain math problems? Yes, it can. It is important to take note, however, that it cannot solve all your math problems for you.

Did you also know that Google Search also has shortcuts? Typing in the word "weather" plus a zip code of a certain place will give you the weather of that place. Typing in "Define:" followed by any word will give you the definition of that word.

One tricky thing about Google Search is filtering results that are reliable and not reliable. There is no hack for this that you can do on your own, but you can Google recently announced that Google Search now has a fact-checking algorithm that helps it give you reliable results.

Also Read: Google Search AR Adds Gomora, Ultraman, and More: Here's the Complete List and How to Access Them

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Written by Isabella James