Google is a powerful search engine. But the results list can be endlessly long and at page 3 you still haven't found what you were looking for. These tips and tricks will help you specify a better search question.

• Use unique, specific terms (keywords, not sentences). E.g. search for "headache" instead of "my head hurts"
• Don't worry about spelling. Google's spell checker automatically uses the most common spelling of a given word
• Make use of the auto-complete function. Interesting suggestions can help you narrow your search. Start typing "Ghent University" and get suggestions like "Ghent University library", "Ghent University hospital", "Ghent University logo"
• Use double quotes (“”) to search for an exact phrase.
  "what does Ghent University stand for"
• Use "OR" (in capitals!) or "|" to search for several terms.
  Jon OR Jonathan Tennant or Jon | Jonathan Tennant
• Some input is neglected in a search, like interpunction, meaningless words. If you want to include them, use single quotes (' ').
  'de' garage gent
• Use an asterisk (*) to complete a phrase with an unknown word.
  "Winston * Churchill"
  "a bird in the hand is worth * in the bush"
• Search in a particular website with "site:".
  site:eoswetenschap.eu darwin
• With "site:" you can also specify that you only want to search websites from a particular country, e.g. only from the Netherlands (site:nl), Belgium (site:be), Germany (site:de), France (site:fr) or the UK (site:uk). There are hundreds of such top-level domains, as they are officially called. For an overview, see the Wikipedia page List of top-level domains on the internet.
  site:uk driving licence
• Exclude terms using a dash (-).
  "-site:wikipedia.org" to avoid results from Wikipedia
• "filetype:" will restrict search results to a particular file type. For example:
  "filetype:pdf health" will only return search results for PDF files with the word “health” in them
  "filetype:ppt travel" will only return search results for powerpoint presentations containing the word "travel"
• Only search the term in the title: "intitle:" for one word, "allintitle:" for several words.  Alternatively, to find words in the text you can use "intext:"
  intitle:beer
  allintitle:beer contest
• Find related websites to the one you already know.
  related:eoswetenschap.eu
• Convert measurements in no time.
  16 lb to kg
• Search in the website you have found: push the buttons "Ctrl" and "f" (find) at the same time and a search box will open
• Try using Google's advanced search: google.com/advanced_search

Want to find out more? Check out these sources: