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Google tutorial

In this tutorial several questions are dealt with which will help you get more out of Google. The structure is:

1. Some search advice .
2. Basic syntax.
3. Operators.
4. Special syntax .
5. Calculator and dictionary.

1. Some search advice:

• The more specific you are in your searches, the better results you will obtain.
• Try to correctly spell the search terms.
• Bear in mind that singular and plural are treated as different words.  If you don’t find the pages you want when searching in the singular, try with the plural.

2. Basic syntax:

Google allows much more than a one word search.  The simplest way to achieve the most precise results is to type into the search box one or more words.
 
Example: cars "second hand" Barcelona
 
The terms in quotation marks indicate to the search engine that we want pages that include those exact terms.  In the example, we do not want "second" and "hand" searched for separately.
 
We must assume that Google has a limit of 10 words per phrase.  If we want to search for more words than that, a good tactic is to delete articles and prepositions.  We can also include an asterisk in the place of common words.  For example, "In * place * * Mancha", counts as only three words.

3. Operators:

The default relational operator is "AND" ("y" in castellan).  When we leave a space between words this word is assumed by default.
 
E.g.: regional road Andorra - search for regional "and" road "and" Andorra
 
As well as the space, the "+" sign has the same function as "AND".
 
If we want one or the other to appear, the operator is "OR", which can also be written as "l".
 
E.g.: road (Valencia l Soria) - will show us pages with the terms "road Valencia" and those that contain "road Soria".  The parenthesis functions to group the terms.
 
When we want to exclude certain terms from results pages, we use the "-".  Like so, motorbike 500 - Suzuki - will show us all pages of 500 motorbikes that are not Suzuki.

4. Special syntax:

There is a group of commands which delimit searches in various ways.  The most useful ones are:

• intitle: -> we specify that what we want to search for is in the title.
• site: ->indicates that the search will be limited to a website in particular. E.g.: site: google.es Adsense - will search for all pages on Adsense within the Google website.
• inurl: ->searches for pages whose address (url) contains the term. E.g.: inurl:car Seat Ibiza - will show us pages whose url contains "car" and which deal with Seat Ibiza.
• link: ->tells us which pages link to the website. E.g.: link:www.peugeot.com - will tell us which pages link to the Peugeot website.  Another way of finding this out, which normally works better, is to go to Yahoo search engine (search.yahoo.com) and search for linkdomain: .
• cache: ->searches within Googles memory for the stored content of this page.
• filetype: ->limits the search to a type of file. So, to search for PDF files on indian medicine: filetype:pdf indian medicine.
• related: ->will tell us which pages are related. So, typing in "related:www.ford.com" will show us a list of car brand websites.

5. Calculator and dictionary:

The calculator works by introducing the expression to evaluate. For example: (5*20/1024).
 
The dictionary is activated by typing define: and the word.  Example: "define:tree" will give us the translation of this English word.

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