Search The Site
How to Use Google and Improve Search Results
Use Quotation Marks
This is our nominee for all-time most useful hint. Search for Tiger Woods, and Google will give you about 450,000 results. Yikes. Search for "Tiger Woods" in quotation marks, you'll get 342,000 results. That's still too many (keep reading!), but at least none will relate to animals or forests. When you know the exact name or phrase you're looking for, quotation marks can only help.
Learn the Three Fundamentals
Google doesn't drag you down with complicated search strings and dreaded Boolean operators. Just remember these three things. Use a plus sign in your search request only when an everyday word is crucial to the search (Godfather +I). And use a minus sign if you want to exclude certain terms from a search. A search for bass -fish will steer you away from the water and toward the world of music. (Be sure to leave a space before those plus or minus signs, but not after them.) Focused results are the goal.
Search Related Sites
You've finally found the exact kind of site you were looking for. Congratulations, but don't stop now. Use the "related" command, coupled with the URL, to find more sites like it (related:www.tigerwoods.com returns 23 excellent sites about golf).
Search From the Inside Out
If you've found a site you need, chances are that some of the sites that link to it will also be useful to you. Enter link:www.tigerwoods.com, for example, and you'll get back 954 sites.
Search for Images
Want to find photos of Tiger Woods but don't want to sift through thousands of sites to find the ones with pics? Click the Images tab on Google's home page and type in "Tiger Woods" (with the quotes) to get hundreds of swingin' shots. Click on any one to find out more about it, to see a larger version, or to visit the site on which it was found.
Toss Your Dictionary in the Trash
Whenever your search includes a word that's listed in a dictionary, Google underlines the word in its results page above the list of links offered. Click on that word and you'll get not only definitions but also spelling corrections as necessary.
Don't Sweat Your Near Misses
Speaking of corrections, if you misspell your search term, Google will dutifully perform a search on your cracked lexicography, but if possible it will also suggest a more popular version. Thus, the first link for your search on Tigger Woods will be "Did you mean: Tiger Woods?" And you'll click on that, unless, of course, you're a closet Winnie-the-Pooh fan.
Googlize Your Browser
Want to make Google searching a regular habit? If you use Internet Explorer 5.0 or later, download the free Google Toolbar to put Google and some of its most important features right on your browser screen at all times. If you search several times a day, it'll save you lots of clicks.