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Google is the king of search engines. Google is a phone book. Google is an atlas. Google is both a noun and a verb. We don't just do "online searches" any more- we Google for the answers!

But the internet is awash in so much information, it can be hard to find the gems buried under all the junk. That's why it helps to know which techniques will help you find exactly what you're looking for. Here are some tips to make your Google searches faster and easier:

1. Forget Capitalization
All upper and lower case letters are equal in Google's eyes, which means you don't need to waste time capitalizing anything. As far as Google is concerned, "harry potter" is no different from "Harry Potter" or even "HaRrY pOtTeR".

2. Check Your Spelling
This sounds like a no-brainer, but it's important. You can still find relevant pages if you misspell something, but not all websites with the most important information will show up for you. Fortunately, Google is pretty good about letting you know if something looks misspelled. Watch for the helpful tips in red letters: "Did you mean: supercalifragilisticexpialidoc ious"

3. Use More than One Keyword
If you do a search on "tomatoes", you'll get something like 37 million results dumped on you. Much of it won't be what you're looking for. Use more keywords that convey exactly what you're looking for, such as "container tomato gardening"

4. Search for Exact Terms with Quotes
With few exceptions, Google will bring up results that contain all your keywords. But although every single keyword might appear on a given website, it doesn't mean they will appear in the order you gave them. They don't even have to be anywhere near each other, so you can still get results that are way off mark. To search for keywords exactly as you typed them, enclose them in double quotes. Note that this technique is VERY useful for error messages. Example: "general protection fault"

5. Exclude Certain Words from Your Search
Let's say you want to do a search on Everquest Guilds and you don't want any World of Warcraft pages swamping your results. To exclude certain words from your search, put a dash in front of it like so: -wow, -"world of warcraft"

6. Force Google to Search Common Words
Google ignores certain words like "the", "how", and so forth. That's because they usually bog down search without adding anything of real value to your results. However, there may be times when you want to force Google to search for common words. If that's the case, prefix the word with + like this: +where

7. Search for Addresses and Specific Locations
Google can also pull up maps, addresses, and phone numbers if you do it right. Commas help! If you wanted to find a list of Starbucks for a particular location, you could do a search for "starbucks, dayton, oh" (don't include the quotes)- and voila, the first results will be the addresses and phone numbers of all the Starbucks in Dayton, Ohio. You can also pull up a map by doing searches on specific addresses, like this: 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC

With the right techniques and a little patience, you'll be able to find the information you're looking for almost every time. Have fun Googling!

Learn more about this author, Victoria Neely.
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