
— How to get better Google search results —
Fifth in a series of Google search tips.
Read them all:
- How to restrict your Google search to a single website
- How to search Google Images by color
- How to search Google for different kinds of pictures
- How to search Google for the newest results
- How to get better Google search results
Sometimes Google finds too much. You look for information about making a carrot cake and it gives you seven million results. That’s overwhelming.
Maybe your friend is allergic to butter (poor thing). You’ll need a recipe without butter. That’s easy– put a minus sign in front of the word “butter” and you’re all set.
Note: put a space in front of the minus sign, and no space after. Them’s the rules.


The quotation marks get Google’s results down to 29,400 items. But we can do better yet! If you’d rather read about making carrot cakes than watch someone else make one, you’ll want to eliminate the videos. That’s easy: it’s our old friend the minus sign again, and the word “video.”
So what have we learned here?
- Use the minus sign to eliminate terms you don’t want, and
- Put your search string in quotes if you’re looking for a phrase.
Don’t hog all the knowledge– share this with a friend. Your friend will thank you and so will I.