There are some things that you may use everyday, but do not realise how much they can do. A great example is Google: something millions of people use every day, and the homepage for most peoples’ browsers. It’s used by pretty much everyone who uses the internet. I’ll be talking about how you can use Google’s in-built tools to refine the searches and to get better results.
When you search for something on Google – e.g. Twitter or Youtube – the top result will always be represented by larger websites that have millions of hits every day and used globally. Google has tools built into its user interface that enable you to refine the results. For example, if you wanted to see if your site ranked in the United States, you can change the searching tools to use data in the US specifically; simply click one little button in your Google search that says ‘Search Tools’ – highlighted in red below – and it will bring up a selection of tools that allow you to change to your location, time frame and search criteria (verbatim or all) – highlighted in green below – as shown in this screen shot.
The area highlighted in grey represents paid listings. Advertisers select specific keywords to target to determine when their adverts are displayed and are charged when you click on the link (often referred to as Pay-Per-Click or PCC). The area highlighted in orange is the Google+ results and will only be displayed when a Google+ page matches the search.
So, let’s have a look at the in-built search options:
- Geographical listingsYou can select “any country” for global results or “United Kingdom” for results within the United Kingdom (for UK users). It is worth noting that results returned by Google will change, depending on where you are in the world and is determined by your Internet Protocol (IP) address (Google can determine your location based on your IP). This is the reason why when you are in Germany, France or anywhere else for that matter your browser will always default to the countries Top Level Domain (TLD), e.g. France goes to google.fr, German google.de, etc.
- Time frame listingsEnables users to reduce the result returned, based upon when a resource was last updated. This could be within the last hour, 24 hours, week, year or a custom setting. This is especially useful when looking for information that is time specific, i.e. news results.
- Instant listingsGoogle Instant predicts what you’re looking for and starts to show results for your search as you type. You have the option to turn this on or off.
Additional options are available within your “Search Settings” when signed into Google that enable you to do the following:
- Turn on / off SafeSearch that block inappropriate or explicit images from your Google Search results.
- Control the amount of results per page (10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 100) *
- Private results, find more relevant content for you, including content and connections that only you can see.
- Spoken answers (voice recognition)
- Search history: when signed in, you can receive more relevant results and recommendations based on your search activity.
* Unavailable when Google Instant is turned on.
You can also review your search history (if logged in), as shown below.
Google provide a wealth of tools for users that include GMail, Google+, Google Calendar, Google Docs, Google Analytics, Google Webmaster and much more, but few users actually realise the breadth of tools or have time to explore them!