1. Step 1

Use “quotes” to search for an exact phrase such as [ “write an article” ] this would return pages containing that exact phrase while searching [ write “an article” ] would return pages that contain the word write and the exact phrase “an article”.

2. Step 2

If you would like to exclude a word or phrase use the ”-” symbol. Example [ -write an article ] would return results that have the phrase an article but not the word write.

3. Step 3

Now say you are trying to search the lyrics to a song but can’t quite remember the exact words, use the wildcard by including the ”*” symbol, to fill in for the unknown word. Example [ “Wishing * a star” ] to find “wishing on a star”, “wishing for a star”, etc.

4. Step 4

When searching a phrase in a specific location on the web page, my example is searching only the titles, you may input [ “write an article” “intitle:” ] This will then only search for that term in the specified locations. Other options are “inurl:”, “intitle:”, “intext:”, and “inanchor:“(anchor meaning the text used to describe a link).

5. Step 5

If looking for the definition of a word simply search [ define:write ].

6. Step 6

If you are looking for more than one term or phrase, use the word “or” in your search [ write or draw an article ].

7. Step 7

And if you can’t quite recall all of this information the next time you want to search for something - use the Advanced Search link located to the right of the search bar. Happy searching!