Intro
Over the past two decades everyone has benefitted from the internet in their everyday lives and careers. The internet is a never-ending, continuously growing library of resources. Everything from guides to fix your furnace to how to program. If you're reading this it's no news to you.
However most people only know how to use the basic functionality of the search engines to find what they are looking for. Becoming an expert at resource discovery will help you stand out above the rest of your peers when it comes to answering questions in company chat or digging for a solution to a critical issue you are working to resolve.
In this post I will share with you some of the less known operators of the most popular of the search engines, Google Search.
As a bonus, you may have realized Steemit.com search is powered by Google Search Appliance so all of these tricks are usable on the Steemit.com site!
Basics
Everyone online today uses the typical search query which is to provide your search terms into the input box and click Search. The results of this being a very broad search returning anything with any of the words in your query.
Search term quotes
"Caturday Morning Special" The use of quotes around a search phrase ensures your search query returns results which include the phrase exactly as written. This is a commonly known trick to narrow your results if you are familiar with a resources content maybe from a previous visit and want to find that resource again. In this example, I'm able to pull my Steemit blog post to the top of Google search by using quotes around the exact phrase used in my post. Without and you get a variety of results the first not being my post.
+
The + character includes results which may otherwise have been left out. Let's try the opposite and pull more crypto news results to the top... search: Steemit news +crypto. Easy enough and the results are a bit better than a search of just Steemit news crypto.
-
The use of minus character before a word will forcibly exclude any result that might include this term. This can be a useful filtering technique when your result set includes a lot of results for resources that are misusing or combine use of the terms you provided. For example, search: Steemit news the results include a large variety of news results much of which include crypto blog posts. Now try search: Steemit news -cryptoand you will see the crypto posts striped from the search results.
OR
Another commonly used search operator. Include OR between two search queries will give you two search result sets in one. Combining the results that would have been returned and merging the rankings of those results together. Combine this with search term quotes and you can expand your results filtering to multiple phrases to give you query a second guess at finding the resource you need. Alternatively you can use the | 'pipe' character in place of the text OR.
*
The asterisk character is a commonly used wildcard in programming as well as search queries. Using the asterisk will act as a match any word operator. Example, search: "steemit * value" returns a variety of steem posts that talk about the value of many different things where as a search of "steemit value" is going to return links to articles talking about the value of the steemit platform.
Advanced
Use these operators to further advance your search power!
intitle:
The intitle: filter narrows search terms to matching some of the text or phrases in the title of search results. Example: intitle:St. Augustine Lighthouse - Climbing 219 stairs to the top which returns results with all or some parts of the text in the title.
allintitle:
This is a variant of intitle but a better match taking all words or phrases against the title of search results. Example: allintitle:St. Augustine Lighthouse - Climbing 219 stairs to the top.
inurl:
Uses search terms against results that include them in the URL. Example, inurl:cincinnati geofair
allinurl:
Similar to allintitle, allinurl will ensure all terms in the query exist in the url. Example, allinurl:cincinnati geofair
intext:
Same idea as the last few, except this operator directs any of the search terms against the body text of the search results.
allintext:
Again, like intext: this operator instead directs all of the search terms against the body text of the search results.
allinpostauthor:
This one can be especially useful against blogging sites like Steemit.com! It allows you to narrow your results by specific authors. Example, search: steemit allinpostauthor:@shoogie
site:
This operator is popular for hosting google search appliance within your site and narrowing results to only those coming from yours or a specific domain. But additionally if you know where the resource you are looking for exists it can filter your results down to just that specific website. Example, site:steemit.com beginners guide
related:
Using related: operator you can find sites similar to the one you provided. The value of the operator term should be a domain address. Example, related: steemit.com
filetype:
This allows you to filter results of a search for results of a specific filetype. Example, if you wanted to quickly find the whitepaper for Steem... search:steemit filetype:pdf
Conversions
Another feature added to search engines over the years has been the ability to perform conversions of currencies, weight systems, you name it.
in or to
Using the term in or to will incite Google to perform a conversion of two entities or values. For example, 3kg to lbor 60mph to km will promptly return the conversion as the first result to your search.
There are several other operators that exist but some have been deprecated and others just less commonly used or less useful in narrowing your results down. Try out some of these in steemit search box and beyond! Best luck to you in your future resource hunting.
Thanks for reading! If you have other tips for search queries whether on google or another search engine, please share them in the comments.
Image source: pexels.com
Cheers, Willsling