Google Search Tips - Search Google Better

Not getting the search results you're looking for? Well, there are a few simple tricks you can use to narrow things down:

1. Order matters: thursday thirteen is different from thirteen thursday (the first word is given more weight than the second)

2. Plural is different from singular: iPods is different from iPod

3. If you're looking for a particular phrase like Ikea Dog, then enclose it in quotation marks like "Ikea Dog".

4. Looking for a gift (like flowers) in the $10 to $20 range? Enter $10..20 flowers. The two periods (..) tell Google that this is the range you want it to search in. The dollar sign ($) tells it to search prices.

5. Google ignores common words like a, an, the, where, and how. If you want Google to pay attention like a search for The Simpsons, type in +The Simpsons. The plus sign (+) tells Google to include "The".

6. If you want to exclude a word or a phrase from a search, place the dash mark (-) directly before the term you want to exclude. For example, searching for Tom Cruise but not Scientology, you might enter "Tom Cruise" -Scientology. Remember, enclosing Tom Cruise in quotes will tell Google to look for the entire phrase.

7. Forget a certain word in a phrase or a quote? Use the asterisk (*) to fill in for the part you forgot. Example: Say you forgot the last part of the phrase: life, liberty, and the pursuit of ??? Enter it as life, liberty, and the pursuit of * for Google to find a phrase matching the first part of your search.

8. Looking for a quick definition: Type in "define" followed by any term and get its definition. Like: define mp3

9. Day trader? Enter the stock symbol of your choice for Google to fetch the latest quote. Like: aapl goog to get Apple's and Google's latest stock quote.

10. Forget your calculator? Use Google. If you want to add 444 and 666, enter 444+666 to get the answer. Need something more complex? Google can also do logarithms. Like: ln2 for the logarithm of 2.