Using Advanced Search

Advanced Search gives you a number of options that allow you to quickly and easily filter your searches by simply pointing and clicking. You get to the Advanced Search page by clicking the link beside the search box on the Google home page.

On the Advanced Search page, you can do the following:

• Select the language for your search
• Specify the type of file to search
• Tell Google that you want to look for all of the words in your query, a specific phrase, at least one word in a query, or to exclude words from a search

There are a number of other options, too.

Advanced Search is quick and easy to use, and it beats having to remember a bunch of Google commands.

Other Useful Search Techniques

You can further narrow your searches and eliminate a number of irrelevant search results by using the intitle: and intext: commands.

intitle: only looks for text that's in the title of a Web page. In this case, title doesn't mean the title on a page. It's the text between the tags in the HTML code of a Web page. This is the text that appears in the title bar of your browser.

So, to find information about hacking your iPod, you can type intitle:”iPod hack” in the Google search box.

On the other hand, intext: searches the body of the Web page for the text that you want to find. When you specify intext:, Google ignores the text in any links or email addresses on the page, as well as the text in the page's title. Going back to the iPod hacks search, you'd type intext:”iPod hack” in the Google search box.

What if you only want to find out what a word or term means? Just use the define: command followed by the word or term. Say, during your reading on the Web, you run into a page that uses the word Boolean. Just type define: Boolean in the Google search box. If all goes well, you'll get one or more definitions from around the Web.

Keep in mind that this doesn't always work, though – Google sometimes can't find a definition.

For More Information

The techniques discussed in this TechTip only scratch the surface of Google's capabilities. You can find more information about advanced Google search techniques at the Google Web site, or the Google Guide Web site (a fantastic collection of Google tips). Another great source of information is the book Google Pocket Guide. This 140 page book is light enough to carry anywhere, but is packed with a number of useful tips and tricks.

Once you get the hang of the advanced techniques available to you, Google will definitely open a whole new world of Web searching to you.