What does Google and have in common? Well, sometimes you type in a search query, and after scrolling through 10 pages of results, you still can’t find what you’re looking for, so you exit out, feeling lonely and frustrated. Okay, I don’t know why that was censored. Best WordPress SEO experts said, “what does Google and Netflix have in common?” Get your mind out of the gutter. Come for the Google Search tips for productivity, and stay for the slightly inappropriate jokes.
Number 1 Related Search Operator
When I was in the sales team, I use the related search operator, to quickly look up my client’s closest competitors. This was a great way to do background research in a short amount of time, and note down features or functions missing from my client’s websites.
Number 2 Use The Site Search Operator
Use the site search operator, to search within a specific website. For example, “burnout at work site:hbr.org”, and you’ll only see articles from Harvard Business Review. Pro-tip. For specific questions, I like to add “site:quora.com”, company reviews, glassdoor.com, stalking someone I want to connect with, linkedin.com, and for a lot of my purchase decisions, “site:reddit.com”. Although for that last one, I’m not sure if it’s a smart thing to do or not.
Number 3 Productive Professionals
Search by region or country, by combining the search operator with a top-level domain country code. For example, vaccine policies and resources vary by country, so searching for “vaccine” followed by “site.us”, would return different results versus “vaccine site.fr”, France, and “vaccine site.de, Germany. And for all my German viewers, (speaks German) Ah? You can find the full list of the top-level domain country codes, in the Wikipedia article linked down below.
Number 4 Find An Infographic On Almost Any Topic
Let’s say you’re preparing a presentation on a complicated subject like GDPR, the General Data Protection Regulation, that is over 80 pages long. You can type in “gdpr intitle:infographic”, no spaces, and Google will return all web pages that have the word infographic in the title. You can broaden the search by adding “OR inurl:infographic”, and this will now include URLs with the word infographic as well. Combining this with the site operator we went over earlier, we can type in something like “site:bodybuilding.com intitle:diet” to really narrow down our search results, within a specific website.
Number 5 Use The File Type Search Operator
If you are a working professional, this a quick and easy way to find industry reports or research papers, in PDF format. Pro-tip. When I was in college, preparing for management consulting interviews, I literally typed in “consulting case interview filetype:pdf”, to find free practice cases and corresponding explanations. Quick pause.
When I was researching for this blog, I typed in “investment interview filetype:pdf”, and I came across this super comprehensive guide from Wall Street Prep, and it’s under the mit.edu domain. If you’re applying for investment banking, sales and trading, or equity research roles,
Also, Read; Increase Your Cognitive Ability With Waklert
I highly recommend you go through this entire guide. This is legit. I know there are a lot of different file-type extensions you can search for. I mainly use PDF and doc I haven’t found many use cases for other extensions, like PPT. But let me know what you search for because I think I’m probably missing something.
Number 6 Great Way To Find Articles Or Reviews In A Specific Year
For example, if you want to know the best laptop for students to buy this year, simply type in “intitle:2022 laptops for students”, and you’ll find the latest reviews. Or, let’s say with a pandemic, the job search process has evolved. You can type in “intitle:2022 job search”, to keep up to date with the latest tips and trends. Or you can save yourself the trouble, and just watch my blogs. (clicks tongue) You’re welcome.
Number 7 Find The Latest Tutorial For A Product Or A Topic
That is to use the date range feature. Search for let’s say, “Google tasks tips”, and click tools, past year, and you’ll see the most up-to-date information.
Number 8 Find Images With Transparent Backgrounds Only
In Google Images, search for something and go to tools, color, transparent, and now you can copy and paste an image with no background. If you’re looking for high definition icon images to download, I have a blog teaching you how to find those for free, so check that out as well. Link down below.
Number 9 Exclude Specific Words Or Phrases Using The Minus Sign
This is very useful when a search term has multiple meanings. For example, if you wanted to learn about the word “meta” before Mr. Social Network rebranded his entire company, you can type in “meta -Facebook”.
Number 10 Exclude Irrelevant Websites From Your Search
For example, while I love Caleb’s hardware blogs here, on YouTube, I might want to just read an article sometimes, and would add in “-site youtube.com”, no spaces, to do just that. Other common sites to exclude when doing research include pinterest.com and twitter.com. The last four productivity tips for Google are search operators I use on a daily basis. Very simple but very powerful.
Aslo Read: I Paid 5 STRANGERS To Design A Logo
Starting off with quotation marks, to return the exact match for a search term. That’s where Google must be down right now. We’ll-we’ll come back to this. You can use the asterisk as a wildcard search operator, very useful if you want to search for a list of things, but you don’t know the exact number you’re looking for. The plus search operator can be used if you’re researching a specific niche.
For example, App Annie is a research platform that covers all types of mobile apps and games. And I wanted to get results for just shopping apps, like Amazon and shein.com, I would type in plus shopping after App Annie, to get much targeted results. I’ve also found the OR operator to be a good catchall, when searching for multiple possibilities.
For example, if you’re applying to marketing jobs, you can search for growth marketing OR content marketing, OR product marketing, to see what the differences among them are, and see which ones have the most openings. I’m sure I missed a few Google Search tips you use on a regular basis, so let me know about them down in the comments.
