How to do Google advanced search?

The Internet is a vast online database of web sites and web pages that contains text, video and audio files and many other file types such as doc, docx, xls, xlsx, pdf, apk, ppt, exe….etc. 

 

To appreciate just how big the internet is, let us look at these statistics:

As of 2015, the expected global no of indexed unique websites is forecast at 1 billion! That’s 1,000,000,000 sites. (reference) (indexed – more about this concept in a future post)

 

As of mar’2013, Google reported that its index of web pages stood at 30 trillion! This equals 30,000 billion web pages and even more in 2015.  That’s +30,000,000,000,000 web pages. (reference)

Why is this data important for us?

We access the internet using web browsers (Firefox, Chrome, and IE) by typing our search terms into a search engine (SE) such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo search. The SE tries to find the closest match with our search terms, using its unique search formula, out of these +30,000 billion web pages. 

How do you ensure that the search term you type reflects correctly the info that you want and the SE will also understand correctly what info you want? You cannot. It is similar to looking for a needle in a haystack except that there are 2 needles now, your expected info and the search term that you actually type in.

This guide shows you how to narrow down the gap between the 2 needles since you cannot altogether nullify it. This is significant because the Haystack has 30,000,000,000,000 individual hay stalks and increasing every minute!  

You now realize just how important it is to know how to search and the advanced methods of search. 

Concepts & techniques

We will restrict this discussion only to Google since it is the dominant player in this segment.

Concepts 

1.      Determine & specify clearly what you want to search. be specific.

2.      Use as many descriptive words as required.

3.      Use nouns and avoid stop words used in framing/qualifying sentences. (about, a, see, hence etc.)

4.      Explore Google search search settings and choose your preferences.

5.      Case does not matter. GOOGLE and google is same. (except OR which is a search operator)

6.      AND is assumed. Luke and Jedi is same as Luke Jedi

7.      Google ranks search words in the order they are typed. 1^st higher than 2^nd and so on.

8.      Most punctuation and symbols are ignored with some exceptions.

9.      Google searches for all possible word variations. Cook returns cooks cooked cooking  

Techniques

Google advanced search utilizes predefined expressions that are called operators. The idea is to use these operators in a specific combination with your search terms that greatly increases the accuracy of information displayed in the search results vs. the expected information at the beginning of the search. 

There are basic and advanced operators. We will discuss a few of these to familiarize ourselves and start improving our search capabilities immediately. The potential misuse of these operators is established and I do not wish to discuss the advanced methods available for accessing sensitive information on the net. The purpose of this guide is to assist you in your daily search for info and obtain it correctly and quickly. 

This subject is very broad and sensitive. Hence caution is advised during your practice to avoid accessing web pages that are not intended to be publicly available.

Operator’s	Description	Usage
“”	Searches for the exact phrase ·         Type double quotes at start and end of phrase. ·         Searches in word order	“How to cook” “Netaji died in” “Giza pyramid was built”
+	Include word(s) in the results ·         Type a plus sign before the word or phrase to include. ·         A space must be placed before the plus sign but not after it	"Salman Khan" +accident Obama +“Iran nuclear deal” India +top restaurants
-	Exclude word(s) in the results ·         Type a minus sign before the word or phrase to exclude. ·         A space must be placed before the minus sign but not after it.	Lalit Modi –Sushma America +NRI -Indians Buddhism +books -paperback
define:	Searches for definitions of words from various web sources. The operator can be used with or without the colon. ·         Use the operator in the form define: and the results are restricted to a list of definitions. ·         Use the operator without the colon, define, and the results are broadened to include definitions as well as other relevant pages. ·         Use define if more than one word is entered in the query. The definition will be for the entire phrase as typed.	define:Autodidacticism define nuclear deterrence define Salman
*	Whole word wildcard ·         Searches for a missing word in a phrase search.	“India has * languages”
...	Range search ·         number...number	Find mobiles that cost $50 to $100. ·         $50...$100 mobiles Find deaths that took place between 1900 and 2000. ·         "deaths" 1900...2000
filetype:	Restrict your search to a specific file type. ·         There is no space between filetype: and the following word.	“War and Peace” filetype:epub
allintext:	Searches for multiple words in the body of the search result. ·         Begin the query with allintext: ·         There is no space between allintext: and the following word. Google will restrict the results to pages that have all the query words in the body of the document.	allintext:facebook users 2015

 

The above 8 operators provide a powerful impetus to your search efforts and you will immediately feel the difference due to the quality of results returned. 

Combined with the power of Firefox add-ons that I mentioned in my earlier earlier post, you will be able to quickly search, identify and focus on relevant web pages. 

tip: try to combine the operators