Google users discover they have been using search engine all wrong – here are 8 tips to help you become internet genius

GOOGLE is an incredibly powerful tool capable of yielding thousands of search results in seconds. 

The search engine can let you find exactly what you are looking for but often people do not know how to use it to the best of its abilities.

Here are the eight Googling tips you should know from using quotation marks to focusing in on a specific location, according to tech expert Chris Hladczuk. 

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Quotation Marks

Using quotation marks can help to search for a specific phrase.

It could be, for instance, somebody’s name. If you search for “John Smith” in quotation marks, Google will only show you results with that full name.

If you searched it without quotation marks, it would show you thousands more results for pages which happen to have the words “John” and “Smith” in.

VERTICAL BAR or OR

You can use a vertical bar (|) or simply a capped-up “OR” to tell Google you only want it to show one of several search terms.

For instance, if you searched for “BBC OR ITV”, or “BBC | ITV”, it would bring up individual results either only to do with the BBC or only to do with ITV.

If you used a lower case “or” to search “BBC or ITV”, Google just produces a load of results comparing the two stations.

TWO DOTS (..)

Use two dots to search for anything between two numbers.

For instance: “movies 2000..2020” will bring results to do with movies between 2000 and 2020.

DASHES

If you want to exclude a particular term from your results you can use a dash.

Put the word you want to search for first, then a space and dash, followed by the word you want to exclude.

For instance, if you wanted to search for Manchester but did not want anything to do with Manchester United, you would search: Manchester -United

SITE

You can use “site:” to search for information within a particular site only.

For instance, you may search: Katie Price site:thesun.co.uk

LOCATION

Find out about news in a particular location using “location:”.

For instance, you may search: Elon Musk location:san francisco

TILDE

Use tilde (the squiggly line) when you want synonyms to appear in the result.

For instance you could search: music ~classes

It could bring up results including music classes, lessons, coaching etc.

FILETYPE

And you can even narrow down what filetype Google brings up in its results.

For instance, you could search: piers morgan filetype:pdf

And it would only bring up PDF files with the former Good Morning Britain host’s name in, including the recent Ofcom ruling.