1. “Tab be or not tab be”!
You have probably noticed already that there are a number of tabs sat snuggly under the Google search box. You may already be using these frequently, but if not you might want to consider making your life a whole lot easier.
If you are searching for an image, click on the ‘Image’ tab, want to find a recent news story? Click on the ‘News tab…you get the idea. Using these combined with some of our following cheats and BOOM, you’ll be the ruler of all things Google!
2. And/Or Searches
This one is a fairly simple tool to search for multiple items such as “Hotel AND New York”, “Pizza OR Pasta” etc. You will notice how we have capitalised the AND/OR, that’s important. Make sure you use upper case for these, so Google recognises them as a specific command rather than just a part of your search term.
3. Search Using an “Exact Phrase”
If you have an exact search term in mind and don’t wish to deviate from that at all, you can place quote marks around your search. For instance:
“tandem space hopper”
An actual thing, we promise! Google will show you all of the results containing that exact phrase so it can really help narrow down your search so you can be bouncing around the garden with your best bud in no time!
4. Keep it Simple
Now we can totally get on board with this hack! Google is insanely clever so it can find huge amounts of information based on the simplest of search terms.
For instance if you need to find a local plumber to fix a leaky tap, all you have to do is type “Plumbers nearby” (“” quote marks are just there to show you what to type, you don’t need to use these unless you are searching for a specific term, we’ll cover this later on).
Google will be able to suss out your location (as long as you have enabled the location services) and will spew out all manner of plumbers local to you. Easy peasy! No more leaky tap!
Ok, so now you’ve got your head wrapped around those, let’s move on to some more advanced searches…
5. +/- Searches
This is another way you can hone in on specific search terms or exclude words you don’t want to include.
The minus (-) command can come in pretty handy in certain situations. For instance, you might be searching for different types of leaf-tailed geckos (could happen), and Google keeps trying to send you to sites about the Satanic leaf-tailed gecko. Damn that pesky google! So, in that case, you’d type:
leaf tailed gecko -satanic
It will eliminate any results using the work “Satanic”, so you are left with a host of sites featuring all manner of other leaf-tailed geckos but no Satan worshipping ones! Clever huh!
The plus (+) sign does the exact opposite, well duh! It will only show you results that do include that word, so for instance:
leaf tailed gecko +satanic
Throws up an alarming number of pages where this little chap appears!
Tip – always make sure there is a space before the + or – sign and not after.
6. Search a Specific Site
Did you know you can restrict your search to a single website with the use of a colon? This super handy search cheat allows you to pinpoint your results to that of one single website. It works like this:
Google cheats and tricks site:cheatoogle.com
Every result will be pulled from that one site alone. Very helpful if you are trying to pin down a certain news story or topic from a particular source.
Tip – remember you don’t need to worry about using capital letters in any of your searches. Unlike your English Professor, Google doesn’t mind the odd grammar slip when it comes to those pesky proper nouns!
7. Asterisk *
Sometimes known as the asterisk wildcard, this is one cheat that is helpful when you are searching for a term, it might be a popular phrase, book title or even song lyric, but you are not sure of the full title or are missing one or two of the words.
Placing an Asterisk * where the missing word is will let Google know that it could be any word so the search results will reflect that and hopefully bring up what you want.
Try it out with a song title like this:
Papa don’t *
So many possibilities, luckily clever old Google knew I was talking about the popular Madonna hit from the ’80s. Give it a try!
8. Search for Multiple Terms at Once
This will cut your search time drastically by giving you the ability to search two phrases or terms at once. This can come in handy when you want to search for something like buying a house in a particular area, something that may show up under multiple different search terms.
Here’s how you use it:
“best places to buy a house in the uk” OR “where is the cheapest place to live in the uk”
Notice we’ve used the quote marks “” trick? This will ensure you get results based on exactly the two terms you’ve specified.
Tip – the “OR” needs to be in UPPER CASE to work it’s magic!
So that’s the serious cheats out the way, these final two Google tricks are just for fun!
9. Barrel Roll
Type “do a barrel roll” into your Google search bar and sit back and enjoy the show!
10. Askew
Try typing in “askew” into google, and it will tilt the whole page of results. What’s not to love about that!
Hey, those were even more fun than we thought! Maybe we’ll do another post about the all the fun Google tricks you can do!
So now we know that Google does even more wonderful things than just provide us with answers to all of life’s burning questions. Why not try out some of these hacks the next time you are searching for goofy pictures of a crazy horse rather than pages and pages of pictures of the famous old Native American dude! (Try crazy horse +animal and hit images)
