Searching with Google

With all of today’s emphasis and focus on Google’s other services, such as AdSense and maps, people are beginning to lose focus on Google’s original expertise: search. Their goal is to organize the world’s information and make it accessible. But this isn’t possible without savvy searchers.

I’ve noticed that many searchers will enter just a couple words into the search box. Remember, this is the only thing that Google has to base your search results on. The more information you can provide, the better the results will be.

Use wildcards. This is a little-known feature that can be very helpful in locating words and phrases in context. It is indicated by the asterisk, and marches one or more words of text. It forces your query to be a continguous sequence of words.

Examples given by Google include [ cooking * classes ], [ the parachute was invented by * ], and [ vitamin * is good for * ]. The last one demonstrates that multiple asterisks can be used on the same query.

Use the Google toolbar. Have you ever landed on a page, only to wonder where on the long page your search terms are? The toolbar’s highlighting feature will highlight your search terms on the destination website, making it easy to find where your words are mentioned. In addition, you can use the search function in your browser. You may also want to look into the “search as you type” feature of Mozilla Firefox.

I hope this has been helpful to you. Happy searching!