Maybe you search for sites and information by typing in Google only one or a few words in the search box. This works well in many cases, but most likely you will have to go through more pages with probable results, enter more links, and therefore, spend more time to get to what you are really looking for. Here are some tips and tricks that can save you a lot of valuable time:
Complete phrase
If you are looking for the lyrics of a music, poem, a part of a book and you don't know the title and the author, but you know at least one complete phrase, try it and type it in quotes. Quotation marks equal the "with all words" option of the advanced search. In other words, Google will search for pages that contain exactly all the typed words.
Google also helps you get better information about flights, either to plan your trips, or quickly know the time when the flight you are interested in arrives or leaves.If you type in any Google site “Flights from Bogotá to New York”, it will show you in the first location in the results and next to a small plane icon, a list of all the flights available between both points, with information on duration time of the flight and the airlines that operate the route, and their respective links. A table with schedules, airports, days of the week and number of flights will also be at your disposal. It is also possible to know all the flights that leave a city or airport, or all those that arrive at them with searches "Flights from" and "Flights to" respectively. If you want to know the flights to or from a specific airport, use the airport code instead of the city name.
As this service is still being implemented on some Google sites, you may not find it on the Google page of your country, in which case access, in which it is already available.
The web is full of valuable information, but many pages are in languages that you do not know completely, to solve it Google has a sensational language tool. You can type what you are looking for as you always do, and when displaying the results you will see in the column to your left the tools available to improve your search, one of them is "Translated foreign pages", by clicking on this option… you will get all the results in Spanish !!
On the new results page, you will find the number of results for each language that Google selected, but if you want to add other languages to your search, just click on "Add language", and it will give you more results in Spanish. Well, Spanish from Google translator, but very useful for relevant search purposes.
Many times you know in advance that what you are looking for is in a pdf, a Word document or an Excel spreadsheet, etc. So don't waste time with irrelevant results: enter the word or phrase you are looking for followed by filetype: pdf or the desired extension (example: Pablo Neruda filetype: pdf). Google will filter the results and show only the links to these files.
There is a small icon »next to each displayed result. It serves to have a preview of the page before opening it, so that you can assess in advance whether or not it is what you are looking for, making the process faster.
In a search, when finding an interesting address perhaps you would like to go to other similar sites. The easiest way to get to them is to click on the peer link at the bottom of the results page.
And if you want to locate the pages that offer links to a certain address, you must type Link: www.dirección-de-tu-interes.com in the search field, replacing address-of-your-interest.com with the link that you interested. If you put for example Link: www.pfizer.com, you will see all the web pages that have a link to www.pfizer.com.
Operators to include or exclude
Google works with some operators to help you refine your searches. For example, you can search results related to two terms using the OR operator. Another interesting option is to search for a term but exclude certain results which is accomplished using the minus sign (-). If you type Mistral –pisco for example, the results for the Mistral brand pisco drink will be excluded. The minus sign can continue to be used to exclude other results, for example Mistral –pisco –wind, Google will also exclude the results related to the European wind called Mistral.
In June, Google launched another resource in its search engine: instant search or Google Instant. You will notice that with this resource, as you type a word in the Google input box, search results appear immediately. Google Instant also includes the auto-complete feature, which suggests search terms as you begin to type the word or phrase to be searched.
Search in a specific domain
Why search the entire web if the information you need is in a particular area? If this is your case, ask Google to search only in the domain of your interest. If you want to find news about the Ipad on the Apple site for example, type Ipad site: apple.com. The results will refer exclusively to the Apple site. It is simple and more efficient.
Another interesting feature of Google is the search for references to specific parts of web pages. A person looking for Pablo Neruda sites, for example, may want to find only those pages where the name of the Chilean poet appears in the title. In this case, the best thing to do is look for allintitle: Pablo Neruda. If you want to search for places where the information is in the text of the page, the parameter is allintext: Pablo Neruda. Searching for reference in the page direction, in turn, requires typing allinurl: Pablo Neruda.
Recently, Google launched the use of the +1 button, added to web pages, this feature allows Internet users to recommend pages or content that they consider interesting to their Google contacts. Contacts recommendations appear in search results. To make a suggestion with button 1, you must have a public Google profile and be connected. The recommendations you make are stored in a new tab in your Google profile.
Search your way
You can use Google in Spanish, but prefer that the searches be on pages in another language. Or, well, you may find that ten results per page is too little and want to display 20, 30, 50, or 100. These preferences can be easily configured. Once inside Google, click on Options (cogwheel, upper right corner) and Search settings. In this area, it is also possible to disable instant search (changing the number of results per page does not work with this feature), or ask Google to open a new window to show search results, among many other interesting options.
Maybe you are looking for old information or you just want to receive recent information. To save time, the best procedure is to use a filter by date. Google greatly facilitates this work through the panel on the left, which offers links to filter more recent pages, last 24 hours, last week, last month or last year. If your interest goes further, click on Custom Interval where you can configure a specific interval for your search.
If you're going back on a done search, you may want Google to not show result pages you've already visited. Or, conversely, you did a search and visited a page you want to return to but can't remember how. Among Google's search tools are precisely Visited Pages and Unvisited Pages. Just click on a results page to apply the filter. The only observation is that to use this resource, you need to login to Google before making your queries, since the result is based on your search and navigation history.
Evolution of a theme over time
Some issues become very important at some point, only to be relegated to the background or eventually disappear. Seeing the evolution of public interest in an issue or topic is easy on Google with the help of the Schedule. This tool acts as a timeline, allowing you to follow the evolution of interest in a topic for months, years, or decades. Just click on a decade and you can see the evolution per year, and by clicking on a year, you can see the evolution by months. The Schedule is located on the left side on the results page.
Not everyone is willing to keep a series of search operators and parameters in memory, but this is not an obstacle for you to use them. The trick is to adopt Advanced Search, which can be activated through the link next to the search button. More didactic, the Advanced Search brings together a series of refined search capabilities, which can be used individually or together. You can, for example, include or exclude words or phrases, search documents, restrict the search to a language or country, find by date ranges and or focus on a domain. Advanced Search also allows you to exclude adult content sites from results and filter results by right of use.
Alerts
Google alerts are email messages that you receive when Google finds new results, for example, web pages, news, etc. that match your search terms. If you want to receive these alerts, enter https://www.google.com/alerts?hl=es, write the topic you want to monitor in the search field and then define the type of results you want to receive: general search, news, blogs and discussion. You must also define the frequency of alerts.
Some of the practical applications of Google Alerts are:
• follow a news in development
• keep you informed about competitors or about a specific industry sector
• receive the latest news about a famous person or event
• stay up to date with news from your favorite teams
To cancel or modify these alerts, just visit
