Tutorial

Useful Google Tips and Tricks Every Student Should Know

If you want to be successful as a student, you need not limit yourself to your teachers teachings. You have to learn beyond your teachers’ horizon. Google is an essential tool that you would find useful to amass knowledge online from various sources for free.

As a matter of fact, everybody uses Google, but not everybody knows the trick to work with Google efficiently. I’ve come across some students that claim they don’t find the solution to an assignment on Google, but the problem is they don’t know how to use the Google Search efficiently. As a students or a lifelong learner, you need the tricks to be able to use Google efficiently to get the exact things you want, and save more time for other things.

How to Quickly Find The Exact Information You Need on Google

Use web friendly and less words

A search engine works by matching the words you enter to pages on the web. So using words that are most likely to appear on pages will yield the best results. For example, instead of saying my head hurts, say headache, because that’s the term a medical website would use. Simple, one or two word search terms will usually give you the broadest results. Start with short search terms, then refine your results by adding more words.

Be Specific

Be specific with your search terms. If you want to search for an exact phrase in an exact order, then put quotation marks around the words e.g. ‘philibeccass’. Note: searching with quotes might exclude relevant results. For instance, a search for “Chris Brown” will miss pages that refer to Chris Brown.

Search Within a Specific Site

If you want to search within a specific site, you’ll need to precede your query with site: if you know you want your answer from within a specific site or type of site (.org, .edu). For example: site:edu or site:wikipedia.com.

Search by File Type

Search for specific types of files, such as JPGs, PDFs, PPTs, or XLS, by adding filetype: and the 3-letter file abbreviation.

Find Related Pages

Use the related: operator to find pages that have similar content by typing related: followed by the website address. For instance, if you find a website you like, try using related:[insert URL] to locate similar websites.

Get definitions directly

Put define: in front of any word to get its definition.

Were you able to save time using the tips and tricks above? Share your experience in the comments.