Better Searching with Google Cheat Sheet

Quotation marks? Is that what you use to search Google? For shame. There are loads of Google shortcuts that will help you get what you want faster and reduce the fuzz factor.

Google has an advanced search cheat sheet for those who want to move past the hope and pray it lands on the first page surfers.

In addition to the standard AND, OR, NOT you also have other search terms like:

• The minus sign to indicate what should not be selected if you were searching for Harry but did not want Harry Potter then you would type Harry -Potter
• The tilde ~ to indicate search for the word and synonyms like ~chicken soup will also bring stew, recipes and books for your soul
• I'm Feeling Lucky - Google's best guess of what you are looking for in a web site.

You also can use Google as a calculator, a dictionary or with the colon a way to find information inside of a specific web site such as Martian site:jumptheshark.com will search for the word Martin only at www.jumptheshark.com

Other search engines have special pages to help you use their sites:

• Ask.com Advanced Search Tips
• Hakia is a semantic search term search engine. The Labs page allows you to explore features that are not available in other search engines. The Benefits page explains how Hakia is different that the competition.
• Windows Live Search - can be accessed via Microsoft Internet Explorer search bar or by going to the main web site.