Google Search Engine-Tips for using more effectively

Tuesday, May 15, 2007 Posted by Aman Jain


Think search and chances are that you will think http://www.google.com/ .Here are some tips for using google search engine more effectively.

At Google’s home page if you click on Advanced Search ,you can access advanced options that narrow down results to more specific links.

Language
You tend to get a lot of non English results whilst searching .By restricting your search to English sites from the down drop box you don’t waste time on results you cant understand anyway.

Getting Format Specific
You can search specifically for say PDF or PPT files .Choose the format of your choice across the six listed on the Advanced page,or exclude the results that domain box with a website that you want your results to restrict to ,and select only or avoid picking up results from ,by selecting Don’t from the drop-down box.

Paging specifically
The options under the Page Specific Search heading allow for quickly locating pages that offer services ,or have content similar to that of a specified Web page for instance ‘space.com’,the similar pages listed include some from NASA as well as Sky and Telescope magazine ,and several other space –enthusiast sites .

Preferences
If Google is your tool of trade it makes sense to tweak it to your quirks-head to Preferences on the main page .If you want your browser to remember your preferences ,you need to set it to accept cookies-Tools>Internet Options>Privacy for IE.

Languages
You can choose to restrict searches to only English pages ,but remember Google also provides a reasonably accurate trslation of pages in five listed languages –German,French,Spanish,Italian and Portuguese.Also you may occasionally need results that are listed in another language-say if you are researching French poetry .If you need only English results select it from Advanced Search Page instead.

Numbers and Pages
You can set the number of returned results on a single page,and the way in which results are opened –under ‘Number of Results’,select a number from 10 to 100from the drop down box.Obviously the larger the no.the more time it will take for result pages to load .

Content Censoring
To ensure that search results do not turn up with explicit sexual content sue the safe search option.This can be set under SafeSearch Filtering.Choose from three levels –no filtering ,moderate filtering that only blocks explicit images and strict filtering for explicit text and images.

All Across Google
Once set your Google Preferences are maintained throughout all of Google’s services ,so between general searches and Google Groups,there are no differences in settings.
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