Custom Google Search results

I don't know about you, but I use Google Search every day for many reasons including forums, information, sites, shops, apps and everytime I get search results I have to filter through the spam results to get to the actualy results. 

Yeah ! Spam results and I am not talking about Google Ads but results based on "keywords" that are written into the code by sellers. 

For example, I really needed a royalty free flag image, which I know it is widely available across the internet. But the problem is stockphoto and other stockimage sites have infested the Google search results in such a way, that even Ad Block Plus cannot handle them. 

Luckily, Google actually does provide several options to narrow down your search to reach the required information and you do NOT need to be an internet search guru to overcome this problem. 

Going directly to the point here are the top tips.

REFINING SEARCH RESULTS

• Google Search usually ignores punctuation that isn’t part of a search operator. Don’t put spaces between the symbol or word and your search term.
  
  A search for site:nytimes.com will work, but site: nytimes.com won’t.

Common search techniques

Search social media

Put @ in front of a word to search social media. For example: @twitter.

Search for a price

Put $ in front of a number. For example: camera $400.

Search hashtags

Put # in front of a word. For example: #throwbackthursday

Exclude words from your search

Put - in front of a word you want to leave out. For example, jaguar speed -car

Search for an exact match

Put a word or phrase inside quotes. For example, "tallest building".

Search for wildcards or unknown words

Put a * in your word or phrase where you want to leave a placeholder. For example, "largest * in the world".

Search within a range of numbers

Put .. between two numbers. For example, camera $50..$100.

Combine searches

Put "OR" between each search query. For example,  marathon OR race.

Search for a specific site

Put "site:" in front of a site or domain. For example, site:youtube.com or site:.gov.

Search for related sites

Put "related:" in front of a web address you already know. For example, related:time.com.

Get details about a site

Put "info:" in front of the site address.

See Google’s cached version of a site

Put "cache:" in front of the site address.

How to Exclude keywords in Google results

When it comes to excluding specific keywords or items from your search results, all you need to do is place a hyphen in front of the word without a space.

So if you wanted to search for articles about macro lenses for photography but didn’t want anything about Nikon, you would use the following search query:

“macro lenses -nikon”

References: 

Makeuseof - https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/exclude-domains-google-search-results/

Google - Google.com