Tuning your Google searches

Recently I blogged on using the "inurl" switch on Google searches to refine search results to useful web sites, not directories, advert sites and other unhelpful results.  At the time I realised some people may not be aware of the simpler methods you can employ to make your searches more successful, so here (in brief) they are.

I'll use the example of someone (it could be a business or a home user) looking for PC Support, and show how each change to the search phrase refines the results more and more.

1. PC Support.  Google comes up with 41,800,000 results for this phrase!  Not a particularly useful set of results.  The first way to reduce this is to make sure we're only searching for results that contain not either 'PC' or 'Support', but the phrase "PC Support".
2. "PC Support".  Now Google is showing 2,250,000 results, which is a step in the right direction, but it's still too many pages to possibly view. In this case, it's most likely affordable PC Support would be local, there's no point finding a PC Support company in Glasgow when you live in Cambridgeshire, so lets add that to the search.
3. "PC Support" Cambridgeshire. Google is now showing 34,000 results, so we're getting there.  But we're still seeing more results than you can view, so lets add a trick which changes a search for "PC Support" or Cambridgeshire to a search that contains both.
4. +"PC Support" +Cambridgeshire.  Down to 5,140 results, the plus sign in front of each word or phrase means 'my results MUST contain this', and as a result many of the sites on the first page are exactly what you looking for.  There are a couple of sites we didn't want though (recruitment sites), so lets add some new text to remove those.
5. +"PC Support" +cambridgeshire -recruitment -salary.  Now we're down to 2,730 sites, a more useful and managable set of results.

So, to summarise, put "" around phrases, put a + in front of something if it MUST be on the website, and put a - in front of anything if it MUSTN'T.  This only takes another second, but it will reduce the time you spend viewing the results by a huge margin, and could be the difference between success and failure in your search!

P.S. adding the inurl switch I referred in my last article, which removes a number of directory sites, narrows the results down to 314 results.