by Susan Quilty

Created on: July 15, 2009

Google brings a world of information to your fingertips. But how do you tell Google exactly which information you want to find? By learning some advanced search tips, you can use the power of Google to its fullest.

In the following examples, all words and punctuation inside brackets ([ ]) are what you would type into Google. Use these techniques to quickly find more specific information in your Google searches.

* Google Basic Search Operators *

1. Quotes ("...") - Putting quotes around a phrase will tell Google to find the exact phrase as written (inside the quotes). By default, Google searches for variations to a word, such as [ child care ] when you type [ childcare ]. Putting quotes around a single word, [ "childcare" ], will tell Google to only bring back the word as written.

2. Plus Sign (+) - Putting a plus sign immediately before a word, [ +childcare ], is the same thing as putting quotes around a single word. It will make Google only bring back that specific form of the word.

3. Minus Sign (-) - Putting a minus sign immediately before a word will exclude that word from the search. For example, typing [ "harry potter" -movie ] will tell Google to search for the phrase "Harry Potter" but not bring back any results that also contain the word "movie".

4. Tilde (~) - Putting a tilde immediately before a word will tell Google to search for that word and it's synonyms. Try searching for [ decorating ~tricks ] and you will also get results such as decorating secrets, decorating hints, and decorating tips.

5. OR - When you type multiple words in a search, Google automatically searches for all of those words. If you want to search for one word or another, use the OR operator. The search, [ chocolate OR coffee cake ] will bring back results about either chocolate cake or coffee cake. This operator is case sensitive, so OR must be written in all capitals.

6. Wildcard (*) - Using a wildcard symbol (asterisk) in a search will fill in the missing word in a phrase. Typing [ Google * ] will bring back all of Google's products, such as Google Earth, Google Calendar, Google Chrome, and so on.

* Google Advance Operators *

1. site: - This operator tells Google to only search within a specified website. For example, [ giraffes site:www.helium.com ] would bring back pages that reference giraffes, but only if they are found on Helium.

2. link: - This lets you find pages that contain a particular link. Typing [ link:www.helium.com ] would tell Google to find all

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