Save Your Time By Using Our Google Search Tips
Every minute, over 2.4 million searches are conducted on Google. It’s often the first place people go when they need to find something online.
We search every day, both for personal and professional purposes. Finding the right information can take a lot of time if you have to search through several irrelevant results.
One study by consulting firm, McKinsey, found that employees spend an average of 1.8 hours daily, or 9.3 hours each week, searching and gathering information. This can be a productivity sinkhole as more web results keep getting added to the internet every day.
One way to save time on your personal and work-related searches is to learn some "secret" Google search tips. These will help you narrow down your search results and increase your productivity by finding the information you need faster.
Sometimes you need to find information on a particular website. As an example, you need to find a government statistic that you know exists, but you can not find it with a general search.
You can use Google to search for keywords on a specific website using the "site" function.
Enter the following in the search bar: site:(site url) (keyword)
This will give you search results for that one specific URL only.
IMAGE SOURCE: https://www.google.com/
When you need to access flight information, you are often on the move. Either you are making your way to the airport or you are waiting for someone to arrive. Having to load multiple pages in your browser can take up a lot of time. Instead, get your flight results directly from Google.
Just type in the flight number and airline name, and you'll get a listing of flight information without having to click on another page. You can even tab to select flight information for the same flight on different days.
IMAGE SOURCE: https://www.google.com/
If you have just been tasked with creating a presentation on sustainable energy, it can be helpful to see what other people have done on the same topic.
Searching websites can give you a lot of detail, but searching for another PowerPoint presentation can give you even more insight into how others have distilled this information into a presentation.
Google has a search function that allows you to search by file type. This way, files of the file type you are looking for will appear in your results, rather than web pages.
To use this feature, enter the following: File type:(Type) (Keyword)
For example, if you are looking for a PowerPoint presentation on sustainable energy, you can enter the following in the search bar: filetype: ppt sustainable energy.
All results will be PPT presentations.
You can also use this function for other file types, such as:
IMAGE SOURCE: https://www.google.com/
When you search for something like population or cybersecurity statistics and you get results that are too old to be relevant it can get you to feel irritable. You can spend valuable time scrolling through the search results, or you can tell Google what time frame you want to search in.
To narrow your search results to a specific time period, follow these steps:
You can choose from preset time frames, such as last hour or last year, or you can set a custom date range for your results.
When researching a topic online, it is often helpful to find websites similar to the one you are currently visiting. Finding similar websites can also be helpful if you are looking for a particular product or service online and want to make a comparison.
Google can show you a list of related websites if you use the "Related" feature.
Enter the following in your search bar: related:https://website.com
Another way you can use this search tip is to search for competitors by entering the URL of your own website in the search.
IMAGE SOURCE: https://www.google.com/
Non-relevant results are one of the biggest time wasters when searching online. You have to scroll through results that have nothing to do with what you are actually looking for just because they use a related keyword.
For example, let us say you are looking for Ruby Slipper Cafe in New Orleans. But in your search results, you keep getting pages that refer to the movie The Wizard of Oz. You can exclude these irrelevant results by using the negative keyword feature.
Simply enter: (keyword) -(keyword)
Basically, you just put a minus sign in front of a keyword you want to exclude from your search. In the example above, you would enter: ruby slippers -oz.
IT consultants aren’t just for large projects, we can also help you boost productivity in your everyday workflow to make your life easier.
Article used with permission from The Technology Press.
T: 01603 414142
E: getintouch@onyx-it.co.uk
Onyx IT has been supported by New Anglia Local Enterprise Partnership through the Growing Business Fund