The Often Overlooked Tools for Searching Google

Breaking: Google searches have been the universal answer to finding the content you want. But did you know that there are better ways to get Google to work for you?

Read time: 2 minutes, 30 seconds

Searching Google is one of the universal experiences in life. At this point, telling someone that you have never used Google’s services is pretty hard to believe. The reality is that most of our daily interactions with Google are only on a very surface level. We search for things and accept the results that Google prioritizes for us. If we are really dedicated, we may even scroll through a few pages of results but that’s as far as most of us go. Luckily, Google has built-in search tools that allow users to push aside the fluff and get straight to the heart of the content that they need. Here are our top tips for utilizing these tools.

Tilde

By using a tilde before a word, you will include all of its synonyms in your search results. In other words, if you are looking for a gift for that baseball fan in your life, you can search “Baseball ~gifts” and Google will group presents, gifts and other shopping ideas in your search.

Site: Query

This tip is particularly helpful in a professional sense as it allows you to hyper-specialize the location of the content you want to find. For example, if you wanted to search through a trusted source like 2060 Digital for some YouTube marketing tips you could search “YouTube best practices:2060Digital.com”. This tool allows you to choose the specific site that you want to find content from, which allows you to dig through immense piles of information.

Link: Query

One of the best ways to track successful content for content producers is by using Google’s link: query tool. By typing “link:” before your desired URL, you can find where that URL has been shared, either as a hyperlink or as a source. This works great for tracking where your content is being shared.

Reverse Image Search

On sites like Pinterest and other information sharing sites, images often become dissociated with the content for which it was originally intended. Say, for example, you found a picture of an amazing looking cake and you wanted to learn how to make that specific cake. You can download that image, go to Google’s image tab, and click on the camera icon in the search bar. You can then upload or insert an image and Google will find the source of that image, which hopefully will lead you straight to that delicious cake recipe.

Dashes

This tip may be easier to remember if you think of it as subtraction. By using a dash in front of a specific term you remove that term from your results. So if you are looking to watch the World Cup, but don’t trust the Reddit streams, you can search “Watch World Cup Online -Reddit”.

These tools will make Google an even easier tool to utilize regardless of whether you are a marketer or just the average user. Of course, if you want to optimize your content or website so that you appear in more native searches, contact us at 2060 Digital.