Googling effectively

Millions of people use Google everyday for various reasons. However, most of them are completely unaware of certain hacks that ease the experience. Here are some useful Google search tips to maximise your search efficiency.

Use asterisk for unknown words

You heard a song somewhere and want to find that, but you don’t know the lyrics. You can still find the song using some discrete words and asterisks to fill in for unknown parts. Search for “Hail the apo*” and Google will figure out that you wanted to search for “Hail the apocalypse”.

Use hyphen to exclude words

You can exclude some specific things from your search and make it more useful for you. Like if you type “Ozzy Osbourne songs -no more tears”, it will show you all other songs of Ozzy, excluding ‘No more tears’.

Spelling doesn’t matter

Spelling doesn’t really matter if it is pretty close to the exact one. Google can figure out the mistake and search that by fixing it. Like if you write “How tp use onlns bankiing”, Google will automatically search for “How to use online banking”. So if you are a dimwit with no basic skills, google has your back and won’t even make you feel too bad about it.

Use a colon to search specific sites

If you want to know about a topic from a particular website, type the site’s name after the topic, followed by a colon. For example, “Australian bushfire:bbc.com” will show you news about Australian bushfire, exclusively published in BBC.

Use important words only

Suppose you want to find the best Chinese restaurants in Dhaka city. Don’t type a lengthy and detailed sentence like “Which are the best Chinese restaurants that I can find in Dhaka city?” Just simply use key words like “Best Chinese restaurants Dhaka” and search for your query. Utilise the time you saved by doing completely useless and meaningless things.

Use DEFINE to learn about a word in detail

“DEFINE: any word” is the format which you can use to find out the meaning, origin and examples of a word. You can even see etymology and a graph of its use over time. Sometimes Google may shift the web to show acronyms and other details.

Use images to search images

Have you ever come across an image that looks familiar but you can’t exactly remember it? Search it with that image on Google, just like you do with texts. Save the image if it’s not saved yet and use Google images (with camera button) to find similar images on the web.