Power searching on Google
Top tips to get the most out of the world's most popular search engine
Beneath Google's plain exterior lurks a myriad of powerful search tools. Here are a few of our favorites to get you started.
- link:www.example.com
Finds websites that link into the specified URL. A useful way to gauge how important a website is - mysearch filetype:pdf
Restricts search results to the specified filetype - site:www.example.com "mysearch"
Restricts your search to the specified website - "mysearch"
Searches explicitly for the term within the quotation marks - mysearch - term
Putting a minus symbol in front of a term excludes it from the results - mysearch 2009..2010
Restricts the results to the numeric range specified - 25 * 25
You can use Google as a calculator (+, -, *, /) - Define: mysearch
Gives a definition for the word of phrase entered.