Australians love Google – according to Statcounter.com Google accounts for 94.11% of the total web searches in Australia. Bing comes in second with 4.25% share, and Yahoo third with 1.37%

Now, because Google has pretty much become the Aussie default “search” platform and  “search” is becoming an increasingly important daily task for everybody I thought it would be helpful to share some of my favourite search tips

To get the best out of your Google search and save a truckload of time, keep these tips on hand, pin them to your wall or email them to your friends. They will love you for it.
While this is by no means a definitive list, these are in my experience the most practical and useful for anyone in business.

10 Google Search Tips you can use today!

1. Target an exact phrase:


If you’re looking for content about public speaking with confidence your search results will include a lot of results all of which include those four words – but not strung together. Simply enclose the search phrase within double quotes.

• e.g. “public speaking with confidence” and Google returns results with your targeted words in that order!

2. Exclude Words:


Let’s say you want to search for content about “public speaking with confidence”, but you want to exclude any results that contain the term pdf.  To do this, simply use the “-” sign in front of the word you want to exclude.

• e.g. “public speaking with confidence” -pdf

3. Search a specific site:

Have you ever wanted to search a specific website for content that matches a certain phrase?  Some sites don’t have a built-in search feature; however, you can use Google to search any site for your term by using the “site:somesite.com” modifier.

• e.g. “speaking with confidence” site:www.toastmasters.org

4. Search for words with a similar meaning:

If you’re searching for a particular word and want to include results that contain similar words or synonyms, simply use the “~” in front of the word.

• e.g. “speaking with confidence” ~presentations

5. Search for file types:


You can use the modifier “filetype:” to search for specific file types.  If you want to find Power Point presentations related to your speaking with confidence topic type in:

• “speaking with confidence” filetype:ppt

6. This OR That:


Google will always include all the terms specified in the search. But if you want to find one of one or more terms to match, then use the OR operator.  (Note: OR must be capitalized).

• e.g. “speaking with confidence” OR presentations

7. Google as a phone book:

Did you know you can look up phone numbers on Google? Simply use the phonebook feature.

• e.g. phonebook: 0422 332 245 (this is a fake number – you’ll have to use a real number!)

8. Search for a range:


If you are looking for a anything in a specific numeric range use the X..Y modifier (between the X and Y are two periods.)  This is useful for years or prices.

• e.g. Earthquakes 1910..1920

9. Get the local time anywhere

What time is it in Brussels right now? All you have to do is ask Google. Enter simply "what time is it" to get the local time in big cities around the world, or add the locale at the end of your query

• e.g. what time is it Brussels 

10. Forget the dictionary:


To quickly look up the definition of any word or phrase all you have to do is use the “define:” command.

• e.g. define:nanomechanical

I hope these 10 Google search tips help. If there are any you know of and use that I’ve missed, please feel free to share them in the comments.