There are many tips and tricks to use Google that can make
our searches significantly more effective than average. Here are seven of these
keys that you can start putting into practice today.
Most of us use Google several times a day. Not surprisingly,
it is the hegemonic search engine in the market and where we can all find
information about products, trademarks, news, addresses, weather data, movie
references or the schedules of our favorite places.
The use of Google is really simple, that was one of the
premises marked by Larry Page and Sergey Brin since its conception. We just
have to enter the concept to look for in the text box and click on ‘search’.
Even before we finish writing we will be seeing a preliminary results page,
which demonstrates the great power of this tool that orders the Internet for
us.
However, there are many tips and tricks to use Google that
can make our searches significantly more effective than average. Here are seven
of these keys that you can start implementing today:
Simplicity first
No matter what we are looking for, the important thing is
that it is simple. Therefore, it is advisable to start by entering only a basic
name or word. If you are looking for a place or product in a specific location,
we will choose to write the name along with the city or zip code. In short: the
simpler the search, the more results we will obtain.
Short and friendly keywords
A search engine works by matching the words we enter with
the web pages that present that word, so using the keywords that are most
likely to appear on the pages will give the best results. For example, instead
of saying "pay using a phone", we can say "mobile payment"
because that is the term a technology website would use.
In addition, the one or two word search terms will generally
give us the broadest results and will probably cover what we are looking for.
Therefore, we will always start with short search terms, then redefine the
results by adding more words if an additional level of detail is required. In
general, the longer the search, the less results we will get and the more
specific they will be.
Simple ... but accurate
The more specific the word, the more likely it is to obtain
relevant results. Therefore, "Samsung tablet" is probably better than
"Samsung product", which is much more vague. But we must always
remember that, even if the word has the correct meaning, if it is not the one
used by most people, it may not match the pages we need.
Exact phrases
We can place quotes around words, for example,
"portable technology," to find that exact phrase in that exact order.
Of course, we must keep in mind that searching with quotes could exclude
relevant results. For example, a search for “Apple Watch” will not take into
account sites that refer to the “Apple Smart Watch”.
Forget spelling and punctuation
Many people worry too much about typing Google search terms
correctly ... but that is just a waste of time. The spellchecker in the search
engine automatically sets the most common spelling of a given word by default,
even if it is not spelled correctly. However, we must always remember that the
most common spelling of a word may not be what we really want to look for.
The same goes for the punctuation marks: Google completely
ignores this kind of symbols, so we can stop putting characters like @ #% ^ *
() = [] in the search engine.
Do not capitalize either
Along the same lines, Google search is not case sensitive,
so you don't have to worry about whether that word should start with a capital
letter or not.
Check history
One of the most interesting features of Google is the web
history of the search engine, which offers a record of the sites we have
visited, a timeline of our actions and the ability to search our own online
history. Access to this file is available here: www.google.com/history.
