Google search tips: the operators that actually work
Most "50 search tricks" listicles are padding. In our testing, about eight operators do 95% of the work. Here they are, with the situations where each one earns its keep. Last verified: October 2026.
The everyday four
| Operator | What it does | When it's worth typing |
|---|---|---|
| "exact phrase" | Forces the words in that order | Searching for an error message or a lyric. Without quotes, Google "helpfully" swaps words around. |
| -word | Excludes a word | "jaguar -car" when you want the animal. Also great for filtering out Pinterest results: -pinterest. |
| site:example.com | Searches one site only | Any site with a bad internal search — government pages, forums, most news sites. |
| filetype:pdf | Limits results to a file type | Finding manuals, tax forms, and research papers. Combine with site: for gold. |
Worth knowing, used less often
intitle: makes sure your word appears in the page title — handy for finding actual reviews instead of shopping pages. before:2024-01-01 and after: filter by date, which beats fighting the "Tools → Any time" dropdown on mobile. And OR (in capitals) lets you hedge between synonyms, like "lawn care" OR "lawn service".
The asterisk * acts as a wildcard inside quotes — "the * of the deal" — but it's flakier than it used to be. Sometimes brilliant, sometimes ignored. Don't rely on it for anything important.
Dead tricks to stop trying
A few famous ones are gone. link: was retired years ago. The + prefix died with Google+. And inurl: still exists but Google's own results have made it far less useful than it was. If a guide from 2015 tells you otherwise, that guide is the problem.
One habit worth more than any operator: put the unusual word first. Google weighs word order more than people think, and leading with the rare term cuts through generic results fast.
Mobile shortcuts
Typing operators on a phone is miserable, so on mobile just use the tools Google gives you: the tabs under the search box (Images, Videos, News) and Tools → Any time for date filters. Voice search handles "show me PDFs about X" surprisingly well, if you don't mind talking to your phone.