13 Best Google Search Hacks, Tips and Tricks for efficient Googling in 2021

Here are 13 best Google Search Hacks, Tips and Tricks explained in detail to optimize your search efficiency.

Google search is the most widely used search engine in 2022 and there are reasons behind its popularity. In this article, you will learn about the working of Google Search engine and how to leverage the knowledge to use Google search efficiently in daily life.

You will also learn many cool features like Google search hacks pdf, Google search hacks and tips for students also you will learn how to draw this cool heart-shaped graph using Google search.

Let’s begin with-

Google Search: How does it work?

To understand about Search Engine, one must learn about Web Crawler, an important component of search engine. Web Crawler is a software program, also known as Search Bot or Spider, logically designed to facilitate the indexing process. Google Web Crawler downloads and indexes billions of web pages from all over the internet to learn what every page on internet is about. 

Later, when an end user searches something, Google looks into collection of pages indexed with useful metadata, and returns the result close to user expectation.

If you are running a website or blog and willing to rank in Google Search results, you should always be updated with Google Search norms and try to implement Organic SEO steps for Google Search Ranking.

As an Internet surfer, you don’t have to worry about what goes behind the search box of Google. However, you can use some inbuilt query optimizer, designed by Google, to help you get the exact result in desired format.

Google query optimizer tips and tricks helps Google Search Engine in providing appropriate result in time efficient manner. Let’s start with basic and easy to use Google Search Hacks, Tips and Tricks.

Tip 1: “wildcard” search –

Google Wildcard Search is specially configured to find a song or even a dialogue when you just know the broken keywords. Google has implemented Wild Card Search solutions to lets users search broken phrases by connecting them with wildcard character ‘*’.

Let’s search for one of my favorite song by Barry Manilow. I don’t remember title of the song. I just remember the phrase “I am finding it hard” and another phrase “without you”. I am going to use this Google Search hack and my search phrase would be, “I am finding it hard * without you”.

And, here is the result-

Tip 2: “site” Search-

Google’s Site Search feature helps you restrict your result from a specific site or domain. The Google Search keyword operator, “site” can be handy to find result on particular subject from specific site. All you have to do is, append “site: site url” before your query phrase.

Let’s say you really like the articles on Today’s Tech World and you want to read about internet cookies from this site. In this case, You can go to google.com and search for “site:todaystechworld.com internet cookies”. Here comes the result with exact article from your favorite blog “Today’s Tech World”.

Tip 3: “Intitle” Search –

“intitle” search is one of the complex queries which is made easy by Google. Using “intitle” search feature, you can search for the keyword that appears in title. 

How does Google Intitle Search works? Google downloads and indexes pages from almost all the eligible sites. Google also knows what each site is about, and which article is available in which site. Having so much organized information at a single repository makes it easier for Google to query in all possible ways.

Suppose you want to search for an article that should have COVID-19 in title. In this case you can Google search for “intitle:COVID-19”.

You can see all the resulting articles have ‘COVID-19’ keyword in their title.

Tip 4: “inurl” search-

Usually url and title of an article contains the phrase that best represent what this article is about. For ex. https://todaystechworld.com/how-internet-cookies-work/. By looking at URL itself, you can say that this is about Internet Cookies.

Google understands this uniqueness and informative feature of URL, and provides search operator “inurl” to directly search an article which has specified keyword inside its URL.

Suppose you want to visit the official website of ‘Indian Space Research Organization’, aka ‘ISRO’ but you don’t know the web link or URL. Inurl search will figure it out for you. You just need to Google search the phrase “inurl:ISRO”.

You can see that top results contain the official website of ISRO.

Tip 5: “inanchor” search –

If you are looking for an article with a keyword as an anchor or a link, Google provides option to do that in a very easy way. All you have to do is prefix ‘inanchor:keyword’ with your search query and Google will do the rest by restricting search result to pages which contains link or anchor tags as you specified in search.

Read More about Anchor tag and Links.

Tip 6: “related” search-

Related site search feature is useful in finding a site or a niche matching your favorite site. This way you can explore other sites similar to site you are using.

Suppose you are a frequent buyer from Amazon.com and you want to try out some other site which is similar to Amazon.com. In this case you can follow this useful Google search trick. Append “related:” with the site you are trying to find similar match on Google.

Tip 7: “filetype” search-

Filetype search help in finding relevant search result in specified file type.

How does Google filetype search work? – Google has huge collection of indexed data. Indexed data is usually refined and quality data set. Having so much quality data, it is easier for Google to put any kind of search query in multiple ways. One of the best uses of this feature can be ‘filetype’ search.

You can append ‘filetype:.(filetype extension)‘ in the beginning of your query and all the results will be in specified document format. Examples could be filetype:.pdf to search pdf document, filetype:.docx for word document. You can refer the dedicated file-type site to learn more about file types and extensions.

Let’s search for power point presentation for a science project.  Filetype query string can be, “filetype:.ppt Science Project Presentation”

Tip 8: Flip a coin using Google Search-

Google search is full of hidden tricks and features. You can use google to flip a coin for you. Turn on the Google mic and say “Flip a coin”. Or Just go to google.com and search for “Flip a coin”. Google will do the rest. You will see an animated coin flipping in front of you and will provide you total random and unbiased results.

Tip 9: Eliminate unwanted terms from search result using “HYPHEN”-

Google search is efficient but sometimes it cannot be intelligent enough to understand your intention. After all, it’s just a man made machine. But, you can use minus or hyphen, one of the best Google Search hacks and Tricks, to help Google understand your search intention to exclude something out of search result.

Suppose you want to search about Paris, a place in Texas. In this case you want to exclude France from your search result so that you don’t get result about France, Paris.

Tour Google search phrase should be “Paris -France”. This search query will try to filter out all the sites which mention about Paris from France and try to search “Paris” which is not related to France. This search technique is helpful especially to remove unwanted search results.

Tip 10: Search without getting worried about spell check-

Google doesn’t mind if you put a wrongly spelled search phrase. In fact, Google returns the result with correctly spelled query. In addition, Google also asks if you want to search your original wrongly spelled phrase on search engine. Isn’t it an amazing work of Google!

See the below Google Search screenshot. I purposely spelled ‘cofee’ and ‘sop’ wrong but Google still returned the correct results for me along with option to search for misspelled phrase.

Tip 11: Play Tic-Tac-Toe in Google-

Google search is not limited to article and video searches but it also provides entertainment mediums. You can play mini games, animal voices and a lot of entertaining medias.

Let’s say you want to play Tic-Tac-Toe. All you have to do is search the keyword “Play Tic Tac Toe” and Google will offer you to play without navigating to some other site stuffed with thousands of advertisements.

Tip 12: Click on the mic icon on Google Search and say “Give me a Motivation Quote”-

Google is handy, especially with your emotional situations. If you are feeling low you can ask Google for a “Motivational Quote” and Google will give you the best quote to motivate you.

Tip 13: Create a heart-shaped graph using Google- 

This is just a cool Google search hacks to let you know that Google is pro in solving mathematical equations and drawing graphs for any expression.

Here is a cool expression you can Google search and see the results yourself. I am putting it here so that you can use it to impress your friends-

Put this in Google search box- 
(sqrt(cos( x)) *cos(200 x)+sqrt (abs( x)) -0.7) *
(4-x *x)^ 0.01, sqrt(9- x^2) , -sqrt(9 -x^ 2) from
-4.5 to 4.5

Wrapping Up-

I hope you have learned many Google Search hacks and Tricks to perform efficient web search. There are many entertaining ways to learn as well as get entertained with Google. 

Occasionally, Google also offers seasonal features like letting users have colorful Holi experience on Google search screen or letting users fire virtual animated crackers in browser in Diwali period. No wonders Google is so popular.