Most of you frequently use Google Search for the information on diverse subjects. Google Search responds well by displaying a loaded list of results — of which only a few are relevant. To make the most out of Google Search, checkout these tips and improve your searching skills. Here are a few special keywords/operators which can help you restrict the search results and help you narrow it down to the relevant results:

1. intitle: Restricts the search to the titles of the web pages, for example if you want to search for the web pages having WordPress or Blogging in the title, use the syntax intitle:WordPress or intitle: “digital photography” (multiple words can be grouped into a phrase by putting them inside quotes).
2. inurl: If you include this keyword in your query, Google will restrict the results to documents containing that word in the URL (address of the website). The query inurl:teaching will return documents that mention the words teaching in their URL.
3. intext: The query using intext:term results in documents containing the term in the text/content. For instance: intext:Globalization will return documents mentioning the term globalization. Additionally, you can use allintext:term with phrases or combination of words.
4. site: If you want to search for a specific site or domain, use the site keyword as follows — site:microsoft.com for site specific search and site:edu for enlisting domain specific sites.
5. link: The query link:http://www.example.com enlists the pages that point to the specified URL http://www.example.com. For example, to find pages that point to Google Dictionary enter the query link:www.google.com/dictionary.
6. filetype: Use this to search for a particular file-type. Use filetype:suffix wherein you need to specify the extension of file as a suffix. This special syntax enables Google to search for all the files whose names end in specified suffix. filetype:pdf searches for all the Adobe Acrobat files.
7. related: The query related:URL enlists the web pages similar to the web page you specify as the URL. For instance, related:www.wikipedia.com will list web pages that are similar to the Wikipedia home page.
8. define: If your search query contains define:term, Google displays the definitions of the term from across the  pages on the web. This search operator is useful for finding definitions of words, phrases and acronyms. This comes as a handy dictionary.
9. Range Specific Search: If you want to search for some news or innovations in certain particular time period, use two periods in succession without space like “..“. To enlist what was in news from 15th Aug 2010-15th Sept 2010, you can frame your query as news 15/08/2010..15/09/2010.
10. safesearch: If you want to exclude unsafe, profanity, and other types of hate content stuff from your search results, use the syntax safesearch:term.

Additionally, certain operators are also available to help you search efficiently. Use double quotes to refine your search to specific phrases. If you want to search for either of the words in the query inject OR in between the words. Sometimes Google will try to play smart and offer you suggestions and include results on similar words; if you are sure about your keyword you can add a “+” sign to force Google to use your keyword exclusively like +photographing.

Note: There should be no space between the search-operator, colon, keyword/term.

Start framing the advanced search queries by using the suggestions provided above and notice the relevant results that follow. If you want to add more to this list, your comments are always welcome.

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