Google__ The Missing Manual - Kevin Purdy [64]
NOTE
The tips in the following sections also work when you’re searching the Web using Google.com.
Finding Exact Phrases
Putting multiple words (or one word that has multiple spellings) into quotation marks tells Google+ you want to find that exact phrase (or spelling) only, rather than items that happen to include all the words somewhere in them.
For example, search for monster trucks, with no quotation marks, and you’ll get one set of results. Some of them will likely include the actual phrase “monster trucks,” but some will simply contain the words “monster” and “trucks” (like a post that says “The local Ford dealer is having a monster sale on trucks!”). Now search “monster trucks”, with quotes, and you’ll likely see some different results (though some may be the same). All the results will include that exact phrase, not just the words within it.
Quotation marks also prevent Google from searching for possible synonyms and alternate spellings of your search terms. If you search for “healthcare” (with quotes), for instance, your results will only include that exact word and exclude items that mention health care (two words).
Excluding Terms
Certain things are just hard to search out these days. For example, what if you want to see what’s happening in Fiji the island nation without having to sort through chatter about Fiji the bottled water brand? Even more difficult: What if you’re interested in learning about robots designed to look like humans (androids) but not Google’s much-written-about phone operating system (Android)?
That’s when you pull out the minus sign (a.k.a. hyphen). Put a minus sign directly in front of a word, with no space, and Google+ won’t bring back search results that have that term in them. You can add as many excluded terms as you’d like to narrow things down and get to the results you’re looking for.
Say you do a search for android. Most of your results will be about the Android operating system. Even if you add “science fiction”, with exact-phrase-please quotation marks, you’ll still get more stories about phones than robo-people.
That’s when excluding terms comes in handy. To keep techie types and phone obsessives out of your results, add -phone, -smartphone, and even -google to your search terms. Sure, you might miss a few science fiction-minded items that happen to mention Google searches, but overall, the results are much more precise.
Searching for Multiple Terms
Quotation marks and minus signs help you pare down your results, but sometimes you’re feeling expansive. You might, for example, want to see posts about both Korean and Vietnamese restaurants in a certain town, rather than having to search them out separately. To do so, type OR—in all caps—between two swapable, either/or terms. In the restaurant example, you’d type “San Francisco” Korean OR Vietnamese restaurant to see posts about either type of cuisine in the city by the bay. Or say you’re craving both cocoa and Mexican food; in that case, you might search out hot chocolate OR tamales. The first few results might be hot chocolate-related, because it’s the more popular item. But scroll down a bit, and you’ll see that both chocolate and tamales are represented.
You can combine quotation marks, minus signs, and OR for some super specific results. Searching for “hot chocolate” OR “dark chocolate” -Ghirardelli, for example, is one way to really drill down on your high-falutin’ sweet tooth.
TIP
You can read more Google search tips by checking out Google’s own advice for advanced searching at http://tinyurl.com/cnl73j. Not all the tips apply to Google+ (like searching within a website, obviously), but most of them will make you better at finding posts hidden in plain sight.
Saving Searches
SEARCHING GOOGLE+ GIVES YOU the latest and most active posts and news on a topic, but searching out the stuff you’re interested in every time you sign into Google+ can be a hassle, especially if you use long, complicated search terms to find exactly what you want. Happily, Google+ lets you save your search phrases