You need to know something; the latest movie, information about brands. In these cases all you need to do is to ask Google, and Google will provide you with an answer immediately.

But what if you are looking for very specific information? It is not the same.

Imagine that you are a researcher, looking for academic information for your research; if you are running a normal search, you will not get the expected answers.

In this case you need Google Search Operators, in order not to dive into hundreds of useless information.

What are Google Search Operators?

Google Search Operator or GSO are special characters that you can add to your search term, to get more specific search results.

As we mentioned before; imagine that you are a researcher, who are looking for academic information for his research. 

Definitely websites like Wikipedia are not going to be a good choice for someone like you.

Another example; you are an SEO company in Egypt; you need to get more specific information, so the solution is Google search Operators.  

How to use GSO?

GSO have three types; they are:

• Punctuation based search operators.
• Boolean search operators.
• Advanced search operators.

They are combinations between words and symbols, which can help you, improve your search results, by mixing them together.

1- Punctuation based search operator:

This type depends on surrounding your keyword with punctuation, and here are the most common punctuation search operators:

• Quotation marks (“”) for example: “SEO” they are used to get the exact match results.
• Asterisk (*) for example: wild * cats, it can be used to include all the words.
• Parenthesis for example: (B2B OR B2C), it can be used to group commands.
• Hyphen (-) for example: cat breeds -wild, it can be used to exclude some results.
• Hashtag (#), for example: #blackfriday, it can be used to search for all the hashtags.
• The dollar sign ($), can be used to search for prices.

2- Boolean Search Operators:

They are simple words you can include to your search to get better results, and they are all caps, such as the following:

• OR: it can be used between two words to combine searches. For example: SEO OR SEM.
• AND: can be used to include the two words in your search like: SEO AND SEM.

3- The advanced search operators:

They are commands help you to filter your search results, such as the following:

• site: it helps you search within specific website.
• related: helps you search find similar content to a specific website.
• cache: helps you find the most recent cashed version of a web page.
• intext: helps you find words within a body text of a website.

Time to sum up:

To get specific search results quickly; you need Google Search Operators, especially when you are working in the SEO industry and have a lot of word to do. 

Learn more about the previous three types, to get better results and save time.