Why The Need To Learn Proper Search Techniques?

People spend most of their time continuously looking for the right information because they’re not aware of the proper search techniques. Learning and using good search techniques will help you in the following ways:

• Better search results
• Saves your time

1. Using Truncation(星号为通配符)

Not sure of what keywords to use? You might consider using the simple * to expand your search. What it does is that if you place that in the query, then you’ll get results for the word combination you’ve keyed in, with * as a variant. For example, if you type in cartoon * tutorials, you will get sites with the phrase “Cartoon Character Illustration Tutorials”, “Cartoon Coloring Tutorial”, “Cartoon Animation Tutorial”, etc.

2. Exact Phrases( 双引号代表完全匹配)

Quotation marks, ” “, should ideally be used if you want the search engine to only look for sites with exact phrasing. But as I mentioned in #1, search engines are capable of sorting the results in a ranked manner in accordance to how close the words are next to each other. You would probably still get your results if the quote is well-known.

At other times, you might want to use a combination of exact phrases and keywords to enhance your search. For example, you might want to search for sites that provide useful tips on leveraging social media for your business. Rather than using three keywords: “social”, “media” and “business”, you can type in “social media” business in the form and get more accurate results.

3. Use a hyphen to exclude words(用 - 排除)

The minus sign,–, is useful if you wish to exclude a particular word or phrase in your search. This is valuable when you are searching for exception to what search results would typically produce.Don't put a space between '-' and the excluded word.

4. Search for multiple words at once(OR 或)

OR operator already exists in Google. When you type in any keywords, websites that contain any of the keywords will be displayed in the results. The difference with the OR operator is that you can define keywords or phrases with quotation marks rather than have the search engine search for all the words you typed in. This means to say that if you put “social media” OR “business”, you will get sites that consists of either “social media” or “business”, and not any of the three words per se.

5. Use a colon to search specific sites(用:站内搜索)

To search within a site using the Google, all you need to do is input the search query into the Google with the domain name, such as photoshop tutorial site:hongkiat.com. Google will then return the results only from the site you mentioned, such as Photoshop tutorials only from the Hongkiat.com. Note that the site: must be added before the domain name, else Google will search for other sites as well.

6. Find sites that are similar to other sites（相似站点）

This is a unique one that could be used by practically everyone if they knew it existed. Let’s say you have a favorite website. It can be anything. However, that website is getting a little bit boring and you want to find other websites like it. You would use this trick.

• related:amazon.com

7. Find a specific file(文件类型)

An often forgotten feature of Google search is the ability to search for a specific file or file type. This can be infinitely useful if you need a specific PDF or PowerPoint file that you previously viewed or need to use for another project. The syntax is quite simple.

• Search term here filetype:pdf