Believe it or not, knowing how to use Google Search is a life skill these days. It’s not always as simple as typing a word or phraseinto the search bar. Knowing the basics of how the search engine works, and knowing the different ways to filter your results can make work, life, and sanity so much more achievable. This article will help anyone learn how to use Google Search Engine for better results.
How Does Google Search Engine Work?
It first helps to understand how Google Search Engine works before we can use it effectively.
Let’s summarize the way it works by saying; Google indexes new website’s like a Librarian does with new books. You can give the Google Search Bar any kind of question, or phrase, or word and Google will sort their entire “Library” to find you the best possible match. How does it do that? Well, if you’re really interested to learn more, Google has a really fun page here, that can teach you more about it.
Ready to practice your skills? Click here to skip to the tutorial.
What if I don’t want to use Google Search?
Like it or not, other search engines are still using Google indexing to search websites, but they’re doing it a lot less efficiently. If you want search results that are more specific to what you’re looking for, you will have a better time using Google. You don’t have to use Google Search, but I highly recommend it, especially for people who struggle with finding the search results they want at first.
Top Tips for Finding what you’re looking for using Google Search
TIP:Turn on Safe Search
I recommend you start with this, it will protect you from explicit websites much better so you don’t end up with pornography in your search results.
You may already feel really comfortable searching for things in the Google Search bar:
And you may know how to find the google search bar from any browser. If you can’t find google search, click this link to practice your searches: https://www.google.com/
TIP: Use the web address bar for faster results
But did you know that you can also use your Web Address Bar as a search bar?
Here is an example of what the Web Address Bar looks like:
Go Ahead and test it out!
Practice your Search Skills:
> Click the + in the very top of your browser, this will open a new tab. This link will also open Google Search in a New Tab
> then type in “north american birch trees” in the Search Bar
If your screen looks anything like this, you just performed a nice, specific search:
Figure 3
TIP: Let Auto-Complete Assist you:
Notice how the text starts to finish your question for you? If you hold off on typing for a second you might find that there is already a search question exactly like yours in the drop down. Using your mouse to click on that question, will sometimes give you a better result than finishing what you’re typing. Just make sure the request or question is for the same thing!
TIP: Find the Similar Searches to help you:
After you search, you can click back into the search bar and you will see a drop down of other options to search. If you didn’t see what you were looking for on the first page of your search, check out those requests from the drop down to see if those are closer to what you were looking for.
TIP: Look around your First Results page
Check out these items on the right in Figure 3 above. I can see some birch trees for sale here. I can also see the Wikipedia page under that, and that tells me a lot of people probably found this useful. Please note that you are not likely to find what your looking for by clicking through page after page of your search results. I only look at my page 1, or use the tool bar. If I don’t find what I want, I try a different search request or question.
Navigating Google Result Tabs
TIP: Use the Toolbar to Narrow your search:
The tool bar at the top, underneath the search bar is also really helpful in narrowing down your results.
Images, allows you to look at and find images of your request or question.
Shopping, allows you to find birch trees or items related to birch trees that are available for purchase online and near you.
News, will bring up any recent blogs or articles written about your request.
Videos, will show you a list of videos about your request. In the case of Birch trees, it’s kind of crazy how many videos there are, what are these videos even about? 🙂
More, gives you even more options for narrowing your search down to what you want to see.
As you can see in the image Figure 4, you can look for your request on Google Maps, you can see if there are any Books about it, you can see if there are any Flights related to your request, and you can see if there is any Financial information related to your request.
What is this Personal button? I honestly can’t find any official information on the Personal selection so I would say it probably doesn’t work for what you need just yet.