Useful Tips for Searching on Google

Google is the most visited website on the internet. Every day, people use Google to search for things, and to make searching on Google easier and more efficient. Today, I'm sharing some handy tips for Google searching that will help you get exactly the results you're looking for.

Syntax: site:website [search query]

Use this when you want to find content on a specific website.
For example, if you want to search for information about football on the website vnexpress.net, you type site:vnexpress.net football

If you just use site:website without entering a search query, by default Google will list all the content on that website.

Syntax: related:website

Google supports the function to search for websites with related or similar content and format.
For example, if you type related:vnexpress.net, the results will show a bunch of online news sites with a format similar to vnexpress.net.

Syntax: link:website

When you want to search for which pages are citing a specific website on their own site.
For example, if I want to see which pages are citing links to my website "yutojp.com", I would type link:yutojp.com. Google will return results for all websites that have links to yutojp.com

The more specific and complete you make the website name after "link:", the fewer results you'll get.

Syntax: search query filetype:file_extension

Use this method when you want to search for a specific type of file
For example, if I want to find resume files with the .PDF extension, I type: resume filetype:pdf

The results will include files with the PDF extension that match your query

Syntax: search query location:place_name

Use this when you want search results related to a specific location.
For example, if I want to search for content related to "daily life" in the location Tokyo, I type daily life location:tokyo

Results related to the location Tokyo will be returned

Syntax: "search query"

When you search for a phrase, Google will often return content that contains some of the words in your search phrase.

For example, if you type the search: Vietnamese food is very delicious
Google will show results containing phrases like: “Vietnamese food”, “delicious food”, “delicious Vietnamese dishes”.
And now if you use quotation marks around the phrase “Vietnamese food is very delicious” and search again, you'll get results that contain the exact phrase “Vietnamese food is very delicious”

Syntax: search * query

This trick is very useful when you want to search for song lyrics but don't remember them clearly.
The syntax is to place the * right where you don't remember.
For example, when you type into Google the lyrics of the song Waiting for You in the Night – The Men, but you forget some words in it, you type like this: Hear in the wind your voice, hear * your voice returning

This trick will be even more useful if you combine it with quotation marks “”

Syntax: search query -unwanted_part

Use this to exclude a certain word from the search results.
For example, if you want to search for Japanese dishes but don't want results that include sushi, you type like this: Japanese dishes -sushi
And the results will be a bunch of content about Japanese dishes, except for sushi

Note that there should be no space after the - sign

Syntax: search query start..end

Use this to search for things that appeared within a certain time period.
For example, if you're looking for great games from the period 1995..2005, you search like this: Great games 1995..2005
Although the results might not be very precise, you can immediately recognize classic games in the search results, like Pikachu or Line 98

Or you can also search only by start time or only by end time
For example:

Syntax: search query 1 OR search query 2

Google allows you to search for multiple terms in one search. The syntax is <search query> OR <search query>

For example, if you want to search for content related to banh chung and banh bao, you type: banh chung OR banh bao
Earlier you also saw how to use quotation marks "" to search for results containing exact terms, right? We can combine that with OR. For example: "banh chung" OR "banh bao"

Note that the word OR must be in uppercase