Perhaps the biggest reason for Google’s overwhelming popularity relates to its accessibility. While the search engine that has come to dominate its market is both easy to find and easy to use, using Google well is something that can only be accomplished by those who understand how it works. Fortunately, it can be easy to obtain accurate and targeted information from the search engine with the use of a few basic techniques. Here we discuss five of the most important techniques you can use to ensure you get the most out of Google.

• Quotation Marks and Plus Signs – Quotation marks are useful if you are searching for either a quote or words in a specific order. Google will not rearrange the words and will only return results containing the exact phrase used within the quotation marks. A plus sign immediately between two words serves the same function as quotation marks. Example: A search for “To be or not to be” will return results containing that quote exactly as it appears in the search bar. Similarly, a search for tomato+soup will return results containing the words tomato soup in that order.
• “Link” – Search for all of the links of a webpage using the word link followed by a colon and the URL. Example: A search for link:webascender.com will return results containing all of the websites that link to webascender.com.
• Domain or Website Name – Use a colon to separate your keyword from the website you would like to search to return results only from that website. Example: A search for web design:webascender.com would display results for web design from webascender.com.
• Minus Signs –A minus sign will exclude a specific word from appearing in your search results. Example: A search for tomato soup -recipes will return results that contain tomato soup but do not contain the word recipes.
• “OR” – Using or in your searches will return results that contain one key phrase or the other. This allows you to search for two keywords on one results page. Example: A search for web design or web development will return results containing either web design or web development.