Google offers a powerful search engine that you can make even more efficient by using prefixes, operators and special characters.
The Google search engine is a priori easy to use: you go to the site, type in a few words, launch your search and let’s go! The function is even directly accessible on the home screen of many Android smartphones. But you don’t necessarily know all the intricacies of the search engine, and some can be very helpful in getting more relevant answers.
1 – Use quotes
When you type the words for your query, Google searches for pages that contain all of those words, in any order. If you are looking for a specific phrase, for example “new album from U2”, better to use quotes. These are also useful for forcing the spelling of a word. This is because Google can sometimes find that a word’s spelling is incorrect – when it is not – and return results that will not suit you.
2 – Use the star if you don’t know the word
If you doubt a word in one of your queries, you can replace it with the star character. For example, type “oh la * vie” to get the famous song by Sacha Distel.
If needed, you can use the star multiple times in your sentence to replace each missing word.
3 – Use the symbol – to exclude words
The symbol – allows you to exclude certain words from your search results. You just have to remember not to leave any space between the symbol and the word concerned. For example, you can type “high-end smartphone” -Samsung so that the Korean brand is not present in your search results.
4 – Search for one word or another
If you search for multiple words, Google will search for pages that contain all of the words. To search for one or the other of these words, they must be separated with the OR operator (“or” in English). For example, searching for pangolin OR manatee returns pages that contain one of two animals.
You can use the operator with as many words as you want (word1 OR word2 OR word3 OR word4…).
5 – Limit the field of your searches to a single site
To limit your searches to a specific site, use the prefix site: followed by the name of the site, for example “site: 01net.com”. You don’t need to type www before the site name.
Use the star character for more generic searches, for example site: *. Fr to search only in French sites.
6 – Search only in text, title or URL of the web page
Google has several prefixes to specify where you want to search for content: in the page title, in its text or in its web address (URL). To search for a word only present in the text of a page, use the prefix intext: followed by the word (without a space between the two terms). Google had the good idea to provide the prefix allintext: which indicates that all the following words must be searched for in the text of the page. So the search for allintext: word1 word2 word3 is identical to intext: word1 intext: word2 intext: word3.
To search in title only, use the intitle: and allintitle: prefixes (allintitle: refers to all words that follow, similar to allintext :). For a search only in the web address, use inurl: and allinurl :.
7 – Look for a particular type of file
Google allows you to search the Internet in files rather than web pages. For example, place filetype: pdf at the start of your query to find files in PDF format, such as documentation.
In the file types to indicate after filetype: Google allows you to search, among others, in text documents (txt, rtf), Microsoft (doc, docx, xls, xlsx, ppt, pptx) or OpenOffice (odp, ods, odt ).
8 – Look for images similar to a provided image
Google can search on text, but also on images. Go to the site images.google.com and click on the camera icon. The site offers to load a file containing an image, or to indicate its Web address. As a result of this query, you get websites containing your image, but also similar photos.
9 – Find sites similar to your favorite site
To find websites that are close to an existing site, add the related prefix: for example by typing related: lexpress.fr.
10 – Use Google’s dictionary and translator
With the prefix define: you directly obtain the translation of a word, for example by typing define: mortgage. You also have access to a translation function that you can activate directly by the prefix translate:. All you have to do is choose the language of departure and the language of arrival.
12 – Calculate and convert
Need to do a mathematical operation? No need for a calculator. Type it into the Google search bar, for example 123 + 456, to get the result. It is even possible to display the curve of a mathematical function by entering its definition.
Google can also convert imperial units by typing queries such as 123 mph = km / h (converting miles per hour to km / h).
13 – Activate the advanced search form
Finally, Google has an advanced search form. To access it, go to This site.
This saves you from having to remember which prefixes to enter for specific searches.