Gadget Reviews

Here are a few things that are good to know if you are searching on Google. Some of these won’t be necessary for every search you perform. For example, if you search for “facebook”, Facebook.com will be the first result. But if you want to research an obscure topic, look for a less-known website, or find technological data and scholarly research, a simple keyword search might not cut it. The following tips will help you use Google to its optimum extent.

1. Formulate your keywords. Leave out unnecessary keywords to avoid distracting the search result from the core subject. You don’t need your search entry to be a perfect sentence. For example, instead of “who was the general for the south in the civil war”, simply enter “general south civil war”

2. Quick-jump to the answer. Ever wondered what the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button does? No, it’s not a shortcut to buy lottery tickets. You can click this instead of search, and it will automatically load the first website in the page of results. That way if you are not sure what the website for Walmart is, just type “Walmart,” then click “I’m feeling lucky” and www.walmart.com loads instantly, instead of taking you to a list of Google search results. 

3. Advanced search. Click the small “advanced search” link to find multiple search options. For example, if you want to search for a term that is easily mistaken for something else, you can exclude search results containing an additional word. For example, if you wanted to only search for “Fitch”, you could add in the advanced search to exclude results that include “Abercrombie” to avoid getting unwanted references to “Abercrombie and Fitch”.

4. Main categories. Looking for something a little more specific? Along the top left corner of the Google home page are the main categories that you might be looking for. Instead of searching for “Sandra Bullock pictures” in the main search bar, just click on Images at the top, then type “Sandra Bullock” to get a results listing of only pictures.

5. More categories. Main categories not cutting it? Click more to get a listing of the top Google tools and categories that can help you find just what you’re looking for. Click the “even more>>” link to get the entire collection of helpful tools that Google provides to access that hard to get information, because, not everyone searching the Internet is only interested in sport news and celebrity gossip!

6. Still can’t find it? Every time you perform a search on Google, there’s a “show options” link above the list of results that will open a sidebar of addition options of how to manipulate the results. You can view different ways to see related searches, list only results from a certain time period, or change the view of the current results.

For more information about Google tools and gadgets you might like, click the “about Google” link under the main search bar on the home page.