For example, when I was trying to find out information on the physical anatomy of a phone I was interested in, the Xperia Z1, I kept getting results for the Z2, Z3, Z, Z1 Compact, etc. So instead of:
Xperia Z1 technical diagram illustration parts components
I did:
"Xperia Z1" technical diagram illustration parts components -compact
The difference between the two searches is that the second search requires the exact phrase Xperia Z1 and it forbids any results that contain the word compact (to avoid polluting my results with the Z1 Compact, a different model I have no interest in).
The middle terms are all words that could plausibly be along the lines of what I'm looking for, but they're not required to be included in the search. If I wanted the middle terms to be mandatory in the results, I would put the word AND between them:
"Xperia Z1" technical diagram AND illustration AND parts AND components -compact
But that would be a bad idea because it's inconceivable that what I'm looking for would have to have all those words. Alternatively, I could try:
"Xperia Z1" technical diagram OR illustration OR parts OR components -compact
In which case, it would only show results that contained at least one of the middle four words.
Another useful search modifier is intitle: or inurl:
For example, if you want to search for results that have taken place in a discussion forum (perhaps you're having technical difficulties with a program and want to find results on a forum where people with the same problem are discussing it), add the following to the end of your search query:
inurl:forum OR inurl:topic OR inurl:thread
Or if your results are pretty irrelevant and you want to make sure what you're searching for is the focus of whatever page contains it, you can prepend your term with intitle: like so:
intitle:"xperia z1"
Now all your results will have "Xperia Z1" in the title, which can help eliminate a lot of extraneous results that only passingly mention the Xperia Z1 somewhere in the body of the text.
You can also use asterisks as a wildcard, for example:
"dangerous * of lead"
...will show results for:
- dangerous quantities of lead
- dangerous levels of lead
- dangerous amounts of lead
- dangerous level of exposure of lead
Aside from things you put in the search query yourself, you can also filter results by date:
After making a search, click the "Search Tools" button at the top of the results, click the "Any Time" dropdown button, choose one of the presets or click "Custom range..." and input the date range in which you want your results to be from.
This can be useful if you want to exclude some recent major event from your results (e.g. perhaps you want commentary about the Turkish election from before the results came out November 1st of this year).
Or it can be useful if there's a constantly evolving discussion about a topic and you want to narrow in on one timeframe. So, if you're on a Game of Thrones binge and you just finished Season 3 (which finished airing June 9th, 2013) and want to search for results from just after it aired (for commentary, discussions, etc.) but you don't want to spoil Season 4 (which first aired April 6th, 2014) you could set your results' date range to June 9, 2013 to April 5th, 2014, thereby ensuring that all your results will be from the moment Season 3 ended to the moment before Season 4 started. Blissfully spoiler-free.
You can also use filetype: to get results only of a particular file (such as PDFs).
Example:
- Searching for Dell XPS 8500 manual filetype:pdf will only show results that are PDF files (most manuals online are in PDF format)
- Other common file types you can search for include: mp3 (music); xlsx (Excel); xls (Excel); docx (Word); ppt (PowerPoint); jpeg, jpg, png (images); and many others.
Quotations
When to use:
- Searching for exact quote someone spoke/wrote ("I need your clothes, your boots, and your motorcycle")
- Searching for solutions to an exact error message you're getting in a program ("unknown update service parameters")
- Searching for an exact product name ("XPS 8500")
- Searching for someone's name ("Mark Brown")
- Searching for a series of words you think might be included in the page you're looking for ("dangerous amounts of")
- Searching for something that has many different ways of being said. For example, "how do I install multiple monitors" is a bad usage of quotations, because it's unlikely someone will have asked the question exactly in those words.
The OR term.
When to use:
Example:
- Russian censorship OR propaganda will search for results which contain Russian as well as either censorship or propaganda, as well as both.
- dmv OR "department of motor vehicles" will search for results which contain the acronym DMV or results which contain the whole phrase department of motor vehicles, or both.
- "The Colbert Report" OR "The Daily Show" will search for results which include either show or both shows.
Example:
- steve jobs OR mark zuckerberg is a bad search, because it doesn't know that you want the whole two-word names steve jobs and mark zuckerberg to be lumped together. It treats that search the same as it treats this one: jobs OR mark steve zuckerberg. It doesn't know that these are first and last names that need to be lumped together. Instead, you should search: "steve jobs" OR "mark zuckerberg", because then it knows to lump together what's in the quotes.
- 2014 supreme court decisions OR 2013 ...is a bad search, because it doesn't know that you want to search for Supreme Court decisions from either year; it thinks you want decisions OR 2013, not 2014 OR 2013.
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