Improve your Google Search skills - latimes.com

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Improve your Google Search skills - latimes.com:


By Scott J. Wilson, Los Angeles Times
April 27, 2012, 7:09 p.m.
Think you're a Google Search power user? You might not know all the ways to get faster, more focused search results. Here are five tips:

Exclude terms. If you're looking for information on Vikings, the old Norse explorers, you don't want pages on football's Minnesota Vikings. Use a minus sign to tell Google to exclude pages that contain a certain word, like this: Vikings - Minnesota.

Site search. Limit your search to a single website or a specific group of sites, by using site: followed by a Web address or ending. For example, type site:latimes.com in your search and you'll get results only from the Los Angeles Times website. To get results only from U.S. government sites — which have Web addresses ending in ".gov" — add site:gov to your search. Use site:edu for colleges or site:mil forU.S. military sites.

Wildcard search. Use the asterisk to substitute for any word in a phrase. This can be handy for identifying a particular fact or finding a missing word in a song lyric. Put phrases in quotes. For instance, "Perris is in * county" or "in Penny Lane there is a * showing photographs."

Math and conversions. Enter a math problem into Google Search and it will give you the answer (use * for multiplication and / for division). It will also convert currencies and temperatures. Enter, for example, $100 in euros or 72 Fahrenheit in Celsius.

More shortcuts. Put "define" before any word (for example, define photobomb), and Google will give you a definition at the top of the results. Similarly, entering "movies" or "weather" before a ZIP Code or a city name will produce a list of films playing nearby or a weather forecast for that area.

scott.wilson@latimes.com


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