Original subtitles

In

this

course,

Seth

Golden

will

teach

you

how

to

Google

like

a

pro.

Knowing

how to

craft

the

perfect

queries

can

make

a

huge

impact

on

your

efficiency

and

overall

experience.

Seth

has been using Google to

help

him

develop

software

for

many

years,

and

he's

currently

a

CS student at

Yale

University.

Are

you

effective at

searching the

web?

You

access the

internet every single

day.

After

spending

so

much

time

searching,

do

you

consider

yourself

to

be

a

pro?

Okay,

did

you

know

that you

can

force Google

to

search

exactly

for

a

particular

term

by

putting

double quotes around a word

or

phrase?

That

quote is

a

search

operator,

and

it's

extremely

powerful.

Maybe

you already knew that, but

there's

a

lot

more

where

that

came

from

in

this

video.

Searching

is

a skill

not

often taught

in school

or

boot

camps,

yet

many

people,

from

programmers

just

getting

started

to

senior

engineers,

heavily

rely

on

it.

If

you're spending a third of your time researching information,

that

means

a

hefty

chunk

of

your

job

is just being great with Google.

I'd

argue it's among the most important skills

a

programmer

can bring

to

the

table.

But

with millions of results to

sift

through,

most

people

struggle

to

pick

out

the

most

relevant.

The

reality is,

you're

not always going to

know

everything.

You

will run

into

some

bug you

can't

figure

out.

Maybe

you

decide

to learn a new programming language or how to

develop a

feature.

I

guarantee you'll use search to find relevant

documentation

and

articles

and

potentially

to

help understand them.

Becoming

better at

search will make a massive difference

in

your

productivity

and

efficiency,

whether

you're a software developer or

not.

And

if you're

an

online learner,

the

number

one

reason

why

people

fail

to

complete

curricula

such

as that available on Free

Code Camp

is because they get stuck and

can't

figure

out

their

problem.

The

internet has almost all the answers,

but

you

need

to

be

able

to

extract

them.

In

this video course,

I'm

going to

explain

how

Google

works

underneath

the

hood.

I'll

discuss how

to form the

best

queries,

a

fancy

word

for

questions,

and

identify

the

best

results.

And

I'm

going

to

introduce

you

to

around

30 to

40

search

operators that

will

power

up

your searches

to

the

next

level.

Go

learn

to use these operators to

augment

your

existing

searches.

And

instead of randomly clicking on the first few

of

millions

of

results,

you'll

be able

to

search

for

fewer,

higher quality

answers.

While

the info in this video is

focused

on

Google,

as

per

the

title,

much

of

it

will

apply

to

other

popular search

engines

such

as

Bing,

DuckDuckGo,

Baidu,

Yahoo,

Brave,

Kagi,

and

more.

I'm

also going to touch on

more specialized

and

alternative search options towards

the

end.

This

video does have a programming bend,

but

I'm

going

to

try

and

keep

it

as

approachable

as

possible.

Even

if it only offers

you a couple new tools in

your

search arsenal,

this video

could

have

a

massive impact

on

your work simply because

of

how

much

you

use

search.

Stop

being a passive web searcher.

Let's

get started.

If

you're

watching this video,

you probably

use

Google

a

lot.

But

that's pretty easy

for

me to

protect.

Everyone

does.

The

average person makes

3

to

4

Google

searches

per

day.

As

programmers,

we're

super

users,

often

searching

anywhere

from

2

to

20

times

that.

I

certainly fall

into

that

camp

personally.

There

are many awesome resources out there,

Stack

Overflow,

Medium,

Dev.2,

and

of

course

Free

Code Camp, which

are

accessible via a simple

search.

A

common misconception is that you're searching the

web.

In

reality,

you're

searching Google's index of

the

web.

In

many ways,

Google is

like

the hub

station that

connects

us

to

all

the

different

parts

of

the internet where we hang

out.

For

many

people,

that

internet

is

Google

and

Facebook.

I'm

going to help you

understand how Google

Search

works

behind

the

scenes.

Knowing

why some sites rank higher than

others

may

help

you

more

effectively

find

what

you're

looking

for.

If

you're already familiar

with how

Google Search works or

more

interested

in

ways

that

you

can phrase

search queries,

feel free

to

skip

to the

next

part.

The

original algorithm

that

Google

used

to

order

web

pages

was

known

as

PageRank.

Developed

in 1996 by the founders

of Google,

Sergei

Brin and

Larry Page,

the

concept

is

basically

what

if

we applied how

citations

work in

academia

to the

entire internet?

In

the research world,

the more

citations a

paper

has,

the

more

important

and

relevant

it's

considered to be.

PageRank

similarly

theorized

that many

websites would

link

the

most

important

pages,

a

concept

called

backlinks.

It

examines

how many quality internal and external links

a web page has

to

estimate

its

importance.

If

a lot of high quality sites

link to

some new

page,

that

page

might

be

high

quality

too.

When

this algorithm was applied

to a

commercial

search

engine,

which

was

originally

called

backrub,

it was able to

surface

results

that

were

more

useful

to

consumers.

PageRank

is

actually

public

domain.

Even

if you're

not

familiar

with some

of

the

math,

it's

a

pretty

interesting

read.

While

PageRank

is still considered as a factor when ordering search results today,

it's

not

quite the same as in the original paper.

Plus,

it's now in combination with

several

other

stronger

signals.

So

how

does

this

work today?

Here's

where your search results currently

come

from.

First,

Google

crawls

the

web.

That

means

it

algorithmically

discovers

and

compiles

new and

updated

web

pages

into

a

massive

internal database of millions and billions of

sites.

There's

also a few ways search engines like Google

can

find

a

new web

page,

such

as

sending

bots,

also

known

as spiders, to visit

them following links

from

known

pages.

People

can also submit

pages for Google to index, which is

called using a sitemap.

Google

renders

the

web page during

this

process,

which

includes

running

JavaScript,

in order

to

ensure

that

all

content

is

visible and

keep

track

of

the

information

on

each

web

page.

Now

that Google has this massive registry of

information,

they

need

to

organize it

somehow.

The

content in newly crawled

web pages is analyzed

and

used for

indexing.

If

you're familiar with web dev, this includes looking at hidden

metadata,

such

as

title

tags

in

the

HTML.

Google

then tries

to

filter

out

low-quality content.

This

is

really important,

as the reason you

probably keep

coming

back to

Google

is

because

you

find

it

reliably

helpful.

Search

engines determine the quality of content through signals, which

are

thousands of

characteristics

of

web pages that,

aligned

with

what humans

might interpret

as

high-quality,

are

reliable.

Page rank,

which

I discussed before, is one of those signals.

Speed

and web vitals

are also strongly

considered.

Another

is

rank-brand,

which uses

AI to conduct

semantic

search,

or

make

sense

of

the

connections

between

links

and

content

in

web

pages.

Google

stated

that

rank-brand

learns to improve over time, and was at least at one point

the

third

most important signal.

There

are also thousands of search quality raters

who have

the

job

of

ensuring

these

signals

are

working as intended.

After

quality filtering,

Google clusters

web

pages with

similar

information.

One

web page

is

selected

to

best

represent each

group

of

similar

pages.

This

is

what you see

in

the

search

results.

Google's

algorithm

is

still

somewhat

secret,

in

part

because

of

the

black

box

nature

of

AI,

and

in

part to

try and avoid people gaming the

system.

So

what

happens

when you search something?

Whenever

you enter a query, Google

does

its

best

to

use

some

of

the

signals

I

discussed

before

and

interpret

what your search means.

This can be

tricky,

as, like humans,

search engines

have

difficulty

in

identifying

things

like

tone

from

text

alone.

According

to

Google,

it

took

five years

to

develop

their

system

for

spelling

mistakes

and

synonym matching,

but it's now

used

in

around 30% of searches,

so

I'd

say

it's

probably

worth

it.

After

Google has an idea of the meaning of your search,

they

then

scan their

database

for

the web pages

they

believe

will be most relevant.

Relevancy

is influenced

by

literally hundreds of factors,

such

as

your

location

and

language.

Because

Google's

registry is

so

massive,

there will

often

be

millions

of

results

relevant

to your

search.

Those

pages

are ranked

programmatically based

on

their relevance

and

then served

to

you,

usually

in a few milliseconds.

Let's

say I search for science

internships.

Some

information Google has on me from my last

three

months

of

usage.

My

location

is

at a university.

I'm

studying computer science.

I

read

the Verge,

TechCrunch, and

FreeCodeCamp,

and three

of

my

most

visited

websites

are

GitHub,

FreeCodeCamp,

and StackOverflow.

Google

was able to use this context in combination with

my query,

which

is

popular

from

my

area,

and

determine that

what I actually want to

see

information

on

is

not

science

internships,

but

computer science

internships.

And

you can actually test how this works

from

any

location.

Now

that you have a better idea

of how

Google serves

web

pages,

let's

see

how

you

can

form

better

queries.

Time

to

discuss

the

ultimate

question

for

getting

the

most

out

of

Google.

What

should you

actually

type in

the

search

box?

How

can we

take the

inordinate

number of

results

and

filter

them

down

to

what

you

truly

want?

Be

thoughtful.

Writing

efficiently

is

about finding the balance between concise

and

descriptive queries.

Begin

with something simple, like what is X or how

did

Y?

Depending

on the results of your search,

you

can

reformat your

phrasing.

Use

what we learned about how Google works.

Whenever

you make

a

search,

put yourself

in

the

mindset

of

the

person

writing

your

answer.

When

rephrasing

your

question,

consider

what

words

might

they

include

in

the

title or

content

of

your

ideal

web

page.

What

synonyms

or key phrases?

For

instance,

don't

search I'm confused by

when

I

should

use

semicolons.

Instead,

try

when

to use semicolons

or

semicolon

grammar

tips.

Being

more

precise

in your

queries usually

translates

to

more

relevant

results.

Let's

say you loved a bake.

How

to

bake

the

best

apple pie returns

214

million

results.

A

more specific

search, such as best Dutch apple

pie

recipe,

has under

8

million

that

are

closer to what I'm

craving.

As

a patient, you

might

search what's the

best

place

to

treat

heart

disease,

where

a

more effective

search could

be best hospital for

pediatric

heart

transplant.

And

if

you're debugging, there's

dozens of

things

you

can

try

here.

Still,

it's

possible

to

be too

specific.

Consider

what

you actually want to learn and avoid

including

redundant

or

unnecessary

terms

in

your query.

Let's

say I need to know how to execute a piece

of

code

when

a

widget loads

in

Flutter.

For

a loading screen, for

example.

Instead

of searching Flutter

async

login

widget, I can search Flutter async widget.

While

specifying

loading

might

be

more

specific,

it

can

also

cause

Google to

return

fewer

quality

examples

of

what

I

really

want

to

know,

which

is the

concept

of

asynchronous

widgets in

Flutter.

Think

about

how

complex

your query is.

Can

you break it down into smaller questions?

Try

to distill the core issue of your search

into

the

set

of

terms

that

you

use.

Google

is often more effective when retrieving information

for

one

question

at

a

time.

Watch

your words.

When

choosing

words

to include

in a

query,

there's

a

few

things

to keep

in

mind.

First,

every

word

is

meaningful.

A

single

word

can

make

a

massive

impact

on

the

results

you

receive.

For

example,

dove,

adove,

the

dove,

and

dove

chocolate will

all

return

very

different

results.

In

the last case, it's

very clear you're

searching for

the

chocolate brand.

But

even small words like a or

the

inform

Google

that

you're

not

searching

for

the

beauty

products.

To

be safe, type

words

that

commonly

appear

next

to

each

other

in

the

way

that

you'd

expect

to

see

them.

French

horn,

not

horn

French.

Spelling,

punctuation,

and

capitalization

do

not

matter.

Free

code camp,

free

code camp in

all

caps,

and

free

code

camp

in

the

snake

case

or

title

case

all

return

the exact same results.

Sergey

Brin

once said

his goal

was for

Google to

know

what

you're

searching for

before

you

do.

We

haven't yet fully reached

that

point, but

it

can

certainly

help

you

get

a

question

from

your

head

into the

search

bar

a lot faster.

Understanding

how

Google

generates

auto-completion

can

give

you

an

idea

of

topics

similar

to

what

you're

researching.

It

can

help

you

complete

your

queries

more

quickly.

Google

states

their auto-complete feature

reduces overall

typing

by

around

25%,

which

adds

up to about 200 years worth of typing each day.

Predictions

are

generated by comparing the

characters

that

have

been

entered

with

what

you've

searched before and

what

other people in

your

region

have

searched.

Google

also has

systems

for

predicting portions of

a

search

rather

than

the

entire

query.

Their

auto-complete engine will

automatically shift from one mode

to

the

other.

Let's

say

you're

confused

by

the

complex

iOS

app

development

pipeline.

If

you search tutorial for how to

install Apple Developer certificates,

Google

may

help

finish

the second part of that phrase.

As

an extra tip, if

you can't remember a word

when

using

auto-complete,

you

can

replace

it

with an underscore as

a

wildcard

word.

If

you want to get more

unbiased

results, you can open up an

incognito

tab.

In

Chrome, that's

accomplished

with

Ctrl-Shift-N.

This

will

log

you

out

of

all

accounts

and

enable

you

to

find

results without

the

important

influence

of

your

personal

search

history.

These

tips

will

hopefully help you ask

better

questions,

but

even very specific

searches

can

offer millions of results to sift through.

In

the

next

part, I'll

discuss

how you

can pick out the most helpful ones.

Throughout

the

rest of

this video,

I'm

going

to

cover

how

to

use

keywords

and

operators

to

filter

your results.

Features,

features,

keyboard shortcuts,

etc.

These

will all help you obtain more helpful

and

relevant

results.

But

ultimately, determining

the

most accurate and

useful

information

is

going

to

be

up

to

you.

Many

people blindly trust

the first

three results will

be

best.

The

number one position

on the results page gets

a

third

of

all

traffic.

But

successful

online

research

requires

critical thinking.

The first search result, the first stackover

flow

answer,

those

won't always be

accurate

or

helpful.

Let's

examine the search results page,

or

SERP,

the one

with all the

blue links.

Each

result

on

the search results page has a

title,

URL,

and description,

also

known

as

the abstract snippet.

As

I mentioned

before,

these

are

ranked by

relevance.

Don't

stop

with

the top result.

Instead

of

randomly

clicking

on

the

first

few

links

from the

millions

of

results,

try

this.

Look

at

the entire page

and consider

the

context

surrounding

the

question

you

had,

or

the

concept

you're

trying to learn.

Remember

what you previously thought your

ideal

search

result

would

include

in

its

title

or

content.

Now

see if any of the results on

the

SERP match

that

info

in

their

titles

or

descriptions.

Reading

results

carefully is the most important

part

of

this entire process.

The

descriptions

of

each

result

often

have

relevant

bolded

terms

in

them.

If

I search

how to audit a class online,

I'll

see

the

top

result

has bolded, auditing

a

course.

If

you see words you're unfamiliar with in a title or

description,

don't

skip

that

result.

You

can open another tab and look up

the definition,

and

then

return to

your

research.

Another

essential tool

that

Google engineers

recommend for

finding

an answer

or

getting

a

handle

on

a

topic is

called

lateral

browsing.

When

I'm researching a topic or debugging some code, I'll often control click on

several

results

at once.

This

will open them in new tabs for me to peruse,

swapping

between is

needed

to

cross-reference

content.

When

scanning through

your

search results, take

note

of

top

level domain names or

TLDs.

These

are

the

highest level

of

abstraction

for

domain

name

systems

or

the

DNS, and

noted

as

the ending

of

each

domain

name.

These

are important as a way of gauging reputation,

authenticity, or authority.

In

the United States,

sites

for

educational institutions will

commonly

end

with.edu.

This

is generally an easy way to identify more

reputable

sources.

It

also applies for other TLDs such as.gov for

government

websites.

You

can

often

pick

a website source based on

their

domain

ending

with

a country

code.

For

instance,

sites

based

in

Spain

might

end

with

ES

and

sites

in

India,

often

end

with

.in.

Notably,

you don't need to live in a country to use

their

country

code

as

a

domain

ending.

.io,

meant to refer to

sites

in

the British Indian

Ocean

Territory,

has been

heavily

adopted

by computer

scientists because it can refer to input-output

and

because

it

sounds

cool.

Internationally,

many

TLDs

combine a

country

code

with endings such as.go,.br,.co,

.im,

which are the equivalent of.gov

and.com

domains,

respectively.

You

may come across information while searching the web that

you

question.

Some

info can change significantly based on context.

If

you search

for

the number of

programmers

in

the

world,

that

number

will

change

based

on

how

the source

defines a programmer.

Don't

accept

that

anything you

read on

the internet is authoritatively

accurate.

Google does

their

best

to

filter

out bad

actors,

but stuff

slips

through

the

cracks.

Additionally,

even people

with

good intentions often

make

it

difficult

to

verify

their

statements.

If

I said 73% of programmers go

to

bed before

midnight,

how

can

you

best

confirm

that?

Ideally,

I'd

have provided a source, but I

didn't,

so

as

far

as you

know,

I

just

pulled

that

number out of my butt.

Who's

considered

a programmer?

Time

zones

exist,

so midnight

where?

As

an

inquisitive

person,

you

can

start by

conducting

another

search

of

your

own,

but

take

care to not include the answer in your query.

That's

an easy way to have confirmation

bias.

If

you search for, are

there

25 million programmers in

the

world?

Chances

are, someone in

the world has written

down

or

recorded

that

statistic.

You've

found it on the web, but

that

doesn't mean

the

number

is

right.

A

search asking, JavaScript is

the

most popular

programming

language

is

likely

to

pull

up

information

saying

that

yeah,

people

love

JavaScript.

Instead,

try and

write more general, open-ended

queries like

most

popular

programming

language

2022

or how

many

programmers in

the

world.

A

fantastic way to verify

information

is

to

find

several

perspectives.

If

multiple credible sources

agree

on an

answer,

it's

more likely

to

be

correct.

Check

to

see when content

was

written and

where it's sourced

from.

Then

consider

if

that

makes

sense

for

the

subject

matter.

For

instance, an

article about a quote

attributed to

a person

who

passed

away,

long

before

any

references

connecting the two on the web.

Did

you

know

that the famous line, Luke,

I

am

your

father,

is

different

when

said

in

Star Wars?

The

line is actually, no,

I

am

your father.

Simply

searching

Luke, I

am

your

father,

will

probably

pull

up

this

result,

that

you

can

go

deeper

by

searching

for

the original

script

of the

Empire

Strikes

Back.

Reputable

sources

are

really

important.

The

new

highly cited

indicator

that

appears

on

sources

that

are

being

used

as

a

reference

for

other news outlets

is one

feature

that helps

with this.

Additionally,

check if

a site you've

discovered

in

your

research

has

any

reviews

or

if

people

have

discussed

it

and forums

like

Reddit.

Whenever

you're reading

information, ask

yourself,

why

might

this

site

not

be

reputable

or

trustworthy?

While

forums

are

incredibly

useful,

since

anyone

can

post,

take

everything

set

on

stack

exchange

sites

and similar

sources with a

grain

of salt,

Wikipedia,

though, is

actually

still

a fantastic

place to start a

search,

because there are usually

dozens of

curated

citations

related

to

your

topic

to view.

One

of

the

most important

parts

of

thinking critically

while searching

the

web

is

asking

yourself

effective

questions.

Is

there

evidence for this?

Is

it

always the case?

What's

an

alternative

viewpoint?

Also ask

yourself

questions

about

those

questions.

Does

that make sense?

What assumptions do I make?

Can

I break this down into smaller

questions?

As

humans, we're

hardwired

to dislike information

that

conflicts

with

our

preexisting beliefs.

This

is one of the trickier

aspects

of becoming a pro web searcher.

You

need to be

willing to

accept all

answers from

trustworthy

sources

with

an

open

mind,

even

if it

makes you feel uncomfortable.

If

you

are

feeling

emotional

about

an

answer,

conduct

another search

to confirm

its

validity.

But stay

skeptical.

If

a piece of information seems sketchy,

maybe

it

is.

It

can be worth it to see what conflicts of

interest

a

source

may have.

If

a site is

backed by

a politically

motivated

or

extremist

organization,

it's

likely

that

the authenticity of

journalism

of

that

source

is

compromised.

Many

sites

also pretend

to

be affiliated with a reputable person

or

organization,

so

always

assess

whether what

you're

looking

at

is

actually

legitimate.

An

easy

way

to

do

that

is

to do

another

query.

Searching

whoownsfreecodecamp.org

will pull up the name Quincy

Larson.

By

reading more about Quincy,

perhaps

by searching

who is Quincy Larson,

I

can

discover

that

he

is

a highly transparent and

reputable

person without

major

conflicts

of

interest.

But

wait, this

video

is published

on

Free

Code Camp's

channel,

which

means

that

I

could

be

biased

when

I said that,

although I

promise you

anyone who

knows Quincy

will

back

me

up

that

he's

amazing.

Still,

it's

important

to

verify

that

you

can

trust

not

only

the

platform

information

is published on, but

individual authors as well.

Be

careful of ellipses

and result descriptions.

Sometimes

sentences will be cut up in a way that's

misleading.

It's

usually a good

idea to validate

an

answer by

clicking

on

the

link

and

reading

the

original

text.

You

can also click

on

the

vertical ellipses

next to

a

search

result

title

to

see

Google's

new

about source feature.

This

will

give

you

information

on

why Google

thought

that

that

result

might

be

relevant

for

you.

Finally,

keep in mind that a website's ranking

on

your

search

results

page

is

not

a

reflection

of

its credibility.

Nutty

stuff

can be listed as

top results of their

relevant

to

your

query.

Similarly,

anything

that

shows

up

as an ad has

generally

not

been

evaluated

for

accuracy

by

Google.

Now

that

you're

an

expert

at extracting and

validating

information

from

Google

search

results,

I'm

going

to speak about some awesome operators that

will

power

up

your queries.

Google

has

dozens

of

features

called

search

operators to

improve

your

searches.

They're

extremely powerful

filters

and utilities

mostly

focused

on

helping

you

achieve

much

more

specific

and

relevant

results.

You've

probably

used

several

without

knowing.

Some

are keywords,

others

are special characters.

They're

mostly case

and

sensitive, meaning it

usually doesn't

matter if

you

capitalize

them

or not.

And

all can be used anywhere in your query.

Google

is

updating

these on a regular basis,

so

the

list

might not

be

fully

comprehensive

at

the time you're watching.

I

have

personally

tested

them,

so

they

should all

work

at

the time

of recording.

Let's

dive

in.

Any

search

term

or

phrase

will

refine

results

by

attempting

to

find

exact

and

similar

matches

by default.

They

will

follow the steps I

outlined

when

discussing how

Google

works.

If

you don't want to remember or reference

the

following search

operators

every

time

that

you conduct more advanced

queries,

you can

visit

google.com.

First

up,

matching

operators.

Remember

that first

example

I

mentioned in

this

video?

Using

double

quotes

around

any

term

will

force

Google

to

match

it

exactly.

I

find this to be among the most useful operators

available.

Let's

say you have some specific

word or phrase, such as

an

error code

or

a

message

you come across while debugging.

Putting

quotes around it will cause

Google

to

more

accurately

find

the

right

stack

over

proposed

or get

up discussion.

For

example,

quote,

flutter,

end

quote,

app

development

tutorials

will

only

find

app

development

tutorials

specific to

Flutter.

You

can

also

use

double

quotes

to

override

spelling

auto

correction.

This

is

especially

useful when you're dealing

with

names

with

unusual

spelling,

or

those

that

are very close to extremely popular

similar

searches.

For

instance, if you

search my name, Seth

Golden, you're

probably going

to

get

a

full

page

of

results for

Seth Godin,

the

famous

businessman

and

author.

By

specifying

quote, Seth Golden,

end

quote,

you'd

be

able

to

find

my

personal

site

and

blog.

You

can

also

use

this

for

specifying

a

particular

author

when

searching

articles.

One

from free courses, Seth Golden,

end

quotes, would filter by

my name.

Google

will sometimes return results with a

term

or

topic

that

you

don't

want.

It

happens.

The

minus operator,

or exclusion operator,

when

used

preceding

a

word

will

filter

out

any

results

containing that

word.

This is awesome.

You

can

use

it

to

easily

get rid

of

all

those

pesky

words that

invade

your

search

results.

Because

let's say you search

for website tutorial, but you don't want

it to include

the

framework

jQuery.

You

can search website tutorial

minus

jQuery

and exclude jQuery

from your

results.

Sometimes

you just need a wild

card.

The

asterisk

operator, like a diamond scrabble tile,

can be used as a stand-in

for

literally

any

word

or

phrase.

I

often

use

it

to

replace

words

that

I've

forgotten,

I

can't

remember

how to

spell,

or

generally

to

speed

up

a

search.

This

asterisk

linux

will

return results on Linus Torvalds,

the creator of

git

in

linux,

more

quickly

than

if I spelled out his name given

that

I

provided

appropriate

context.

I

find the wild

card operators

particularly

useful,

though,

when debugging.

Often

the error message that I'm

given contains a

local

directory that

will

only

be

relevant

to

me.

Instead

of

pasting

that whole block

of text

into Google,

replacing that

section

of

the

error

with

an

asterisk

can significantly

improve

results.

This

can

also be

helpful when trying

to

find

relevant

walkthroughs

for

confusing

homework

questions.

Often

we deal with words that have multiple meanings,

but

are

used

in

dramatically different

contexts.

A

blackberry is

both

a

fruit and a cell

phone.

A

transistor is a

processing unit and a fantastic video

game.

Searching

by

a word's proximity

to

another word

using

a

round and

then

a

variable

number

is

a

highly

effective way

to

narrow

results,

especially

when

the

two

words don't

often

appear

right next to

each

other.

If

Google can't find any examples of the two

words around each

other,

it's

going

to

revert

to ranking as normal.

Let's

say you're looking for a

tutorial on

managing

memory

in

computer

environments.

Manage

around four memory is

likely to narrow

in

on those

particular

results

by

finding

any

web page

containing an instance of

the word

manage within

four

words

of

the

word

memory.

Football

around

six

ESL

will similarly

help

me

fuzzy

search

for

specifically

European

football

instead

of

the American football results that I

would

normally see.

Notably,

this particular

operator must be

capitalized

to function

properly.

Next

up,

date

operators.

Whether

it's finding

recent stackover flow answers or

reading

a

review

from

the

time

a

movie

was

released,

I

constantly want results

from

before

or

after

a

specific

date.

You

can

accomplish

this

with

the

before

and

after

operators.

They

follow

either with a date in the format

year,

year,

year,

month,

month,

day,

day,

append

it

to your query and your set.

For

example,

an

error

message after 2021,

0101

will

only

return

results

since

January

1st,

2021, meaning

that

I

won't

have

to

sit

through

outdated

answers.

You

can

also choose

to

only pass

a

year,

such

as

before

2020

or

after

2017.

Python

courses after

2021 would only give you recent

courses

so

that

you

can

be

confident

that

everything's up to date.

But

wait, I

have

a start and an end date

in

mind.

Well

there's two ways you can

approach

that.

You

can include both a before and after

operator

in

your

query,

or

you

can

use

the

range

operator,

ellipses.

You

can

find info

and documentation

for

a

less

common

programming

language

such

as

with

closure,

2016, dot,

dot, dot, 2018.

You don't just have to use this for dates.

Any

numbers will work.

For

example,

top 7, dot,

dot,

dot,

10 facts,

Apple

computers

will

find

a

top

10

list

or

top

7 list.

The

ellipses

operator can

be a little finicky though,

so

don't

expect this

one

to

work

100%

of

the

time.

Next

up,

source

operators.

Google

provides

several options to filter

by content

type

and

source.

Some

people joke that Google is a better

search engine

for

Reddit

than

Reddit.

Amazingly

enough, I have

found this to be often true.

Many

sites

have

periodically ineffective

internal search

engines,

including hugely

popular

ones

such

as Amazon.

I

also

find that

sites

like

Reddit

and

similar

forums can

have

more

trustworthy

human

responses

to my

questions than the average first search result, so

I often

choose

to

filter

my results

by

these sites accordingly.

Site

is

extraordinarily

powerful

because

it allows you

to

force

Google

to

only

return

results

from

a particular website.

Appending

site

colon freecodecamp.org

to

a

query

will

only

return

results

from

free

code camp.

Importantly,

you can also

use

sites with the top level domain

endings or

TLDS

that

I

discussed

earlier

in

this

video.

Site.edu

will restrict your results to purely

educational

resources

such

as

with Berkeley.edu

or

Yale.edu.

Search

followed

by a website URL accomplishes the

same

thing

in

most

browsers,

but

I

prefer

site

URL because

it's

shorter.

On

occasion,

you'll

need

to

search for

PDFs,

PowerPoints,

or other

documents

on

the

web.

To

force

Google

to

only

display

results

that

match

a

particular

file

extension,

you

can

use

ext or file

type,

which are

functionally

identical.

Simply

follow either with an extension such as txt,

PDF, docs, ppt,

xoxs,

csve,

epub,

etc.

in

the format

file

type colon PDF.

I

find this

operator is

super

useful in searching for textbooks,

academic papers,

novels,

presentations,

and

especially

anything

when

relating

to

academic

research.

Unfortunately,

file type

no

longer works for

mp3

files.

If

you prefer to search the web for news rather

than

follow 400 RSS feeds

like

me,

the

source

operator

is

a

great way

to

specify the

site

that Google

knew

you

should

pull from,

for

instance

Amazon,

source, TechCrunch,

or source, the

Verge,

GitHub.

Your

search

results

can

be

extremely different

based

on

your

location.

While

Google tries to use your current location by default, it's possible

that

you'll

want

to

specify somewhere else.

Locke

in San Francisco will change my

results to

be

more

relevant

to

the

Bay

Area,

even

if

I'm searching from the East Coast.

I'm

a

fan of blogging and reading

other

people's

blogs.

It's

often a

more personal and

conversational

experience

about

niche

topics

of

your

interest.

While

sub-stack

and similar

providers

have

consolidated

a

lot

of

bloggers,

many

websites

and

companies still run their own blogs.

You

can find these through the BlogURL

operator,

which

attempts

to

find

any blog

posts

under

a

domain.

BlogURL,

Google.com,

will pull

out the blogs

under

Google's

registrar.

It can be a

little finicky

sometimes,

though.

No

website is ever able

to

escape

going down every

so

often.

You

can

utilize

the

cache

operator to pull

Google's

cached

or

backup

saved

version

of

any

website.

For

example, I

can

see all of FreeCodeCamp's

articles,

even

if

the

site is

down,

by

typing

cache,

freecodecamp.org.

Next

up,

Boolean

operators.

Google

automatically tries to

include

all

the

content

within

your

query,

and

is

best

utilized

in

combination

with

other

operators

since

it

doesn't

do

anything

by

itself.

I'll

discuss combining operators in more detail later.

As

I just noted, Google searches default

to including everything in

your

query.

The

OR operator is unique from other operators

as

it

causes

Google

to

alter

that

behavior

and

increase the number of

search results rather

than

filtering

some

out.

Using

the

pipe operator

OR,

A OR B,

you

can

scan

for

A

OR

B.

We'll

get results related to A or B or,

importantly,

both.

If

I'm interested in multiple variants of a data science

algorithm,

I

can

conduct

a

search

on K-means OR K-means++

to

return

any

result

that

refers

to

either.

The

OR operator is also useful

when

searching for

something

that's

known

by

several

names.

In

the

American Civil War, the Union soldiers

referred

to

a

conflict that

took

place

in

Virginia

as

the

Battle

of

Bull

Run,

but

the

Confederate

soldiers

kept

their

records

based

on

waterways,

and

in

their records, they

called

it

the

Battle of

Manassas.

When

searching about this topic,

Battle of Bull

Run

and

Battle

of

Manassas,

each

returned

significantly

less information than Battle

of

Bull

Run

OR

Battle

of

Manassas.

As

I

noted

before, make sure

you

capitalize

OR,

or

Google

might

not

recognize

it

as

an

operator.

Next

up,

the

IN

operators.

These

operators can be used

to

massively

narrow

your search results

based

on

the

content included

IN,

webpage metadata.

If

you're unfamiliar with web dev,

by

metadata

I mean

the

URL,

or

website

link,

and

internal

information

such as

the page title, content,

and

anchors.

Each

of

these

operators has two versions,

an

IN

option and

an

ALL

IN option.

The

results

for

both

will

be

similar,

but

ALL

IN will

only

return

results

containing

all

of

the following

terms.

They

both help to ensure that

the words you're

looking for

will

actually

be

present

on

the

pages

returned as results.

Websites

will often put

important information

in

the URL of

webpages.

You

can use INURL tutorial to only return tutorials,

or

ALL

INURL tutorial

Python

app

for

more specificity.

Remember

how

the

file

type

operator

no

longer works

for

filtering

out

mp3

files?

You

can actually use the INURL operator

as

a substitute,

such

as searching for lo-fi,

inURL,

mp3.

The

title of a web page

is one of the best ways to

tell

how

relevant

it

will

be

to

you.

IN

title, flutter,

will

only

return

websites

that refer

to

flutter,

while ALL

IN title,

flutter

app

tutorial

will

have fewer

hits.

The

keyword

you're

looking

for

isn't

always

included

in the

title

or

URL,

in

those

cases

IN

text

and ALL IN text will

have more benefit.

Anchors

are

often invisible, linkable

section headers of

webpages.

They're

usually indicated by hashtags,

such

as

hashtag

hero

or

hashtag

testimonials.

In

Anchor and ALL IN Anchor

will help you identify webpages

with

such

tags.

Notably,

these

inclusion

search operators

are

often

best

used

in

combination

with

each

other.

They

help you extract webpages that

might not have been

surfaced

otherwise.

Finally,

Google

provides

many

utility operators

that

you

can

use

to

quickly

access

all

kinds

of

data.

I

use these all the time.

Wondering

what a word means?

Define

and

then

the

word

will tell

you using

Google's

built-in

dictionary.

It'll

likely

display

in

a

side

panel,

along

with

synonyms.

Define,

entrepreneurship, will quickly pull up the

definition,

and

you

don't

even

need

to

spell

the

word properly.

Related

is one

of the more interesting operators that

Google

offers.

It

returns

websites that

are similar to

the following domain

in

the

format

related,

colon,

and

then the web page URL.

It's

useful

for

breadth

of

research, particularly

when

trying

to

learn

something.

For

instance,

related, will return sites like codeacademy.org,

Coursera.org,

etc.

Need

to check your public IP address, the

unique

identifier

that

allows

your

computer

to receive information?

Just

enter IP address, and Google can

display

what it

identifies

as

your

public

internet

protocol.

Do

you

know

how many

pounds are

in

a

kilogram off

the top of

your head?

Or

how

to

convert

from

Fahrenheit to

Celsius?

Or

how

many

milliliters

are

in

a

quart?

By using the format X and

Y,

Google

can

swiftly tell

you.

For

example,

$456

in euros will

tell

you

that

$456

is,

at

the

time of

recording,

$434.45

in

euros.

Online

shopping is

huge

right now.

Chances

are you

probably search Google to

see

different places

that

offer

your

item

of

interest.

If

you're looking for a specific price, you can search $300 with

the dollar sign,

Android,

and

Google will attempt

to

match that.

You

can also apply the range operator

here

and search

keyboard

dollar

sign

10,

dot

dot

dot,

dollar

sign

50.

Looking

for

a social media account

of

a friend or

content

creator?

Instead

of

searching

their

name,

prepend

an

at

symbol

to

their

social

media

handle

to

more

effectively pull up all their social accounts.

Want

to

immediately know the weather for any location?

You

can just search the word weather for your location,

but

to

specify

others,

append

the

location

like

weather

colon

Bangkok.

While

you might use apps like Google or Apple

Maps or Waze

for your mapping

needs,

sometimes

you'll

need

to

search

for

one.

While

it

returns

the

current location

by default,

you

can

specify

a particular

location

like

map

colon

London.

There's a new movie out

and you

want

to

go

see

it.

While

searching the movie titles usually enough

to pull

it up,

if

it's

based

on

a

book

or

something

similar,

your

search

might not pull up

exactly

what

you

want.

Using

movie Avengers

Endgame

is then

a

foolproof

way to get a lot

of

info

about

any

film

including

reviews,

cast

and

crew,

and

nearby

showtimes.

Then

tech

person?

You

can

see

all

the

stonks for

any ticker

by

searching

stocks

colon

and then

the

appropriate

ticker

such as stocks colon Amazon for immediate

information

about

the

price history

of

Amazon.

There

are several other tools you can access

straight

from

Google's

search bar.

If

you type any math

equation,

Google

will

automatically calculate

the

answer.

If

you ever need an

on-demand

clock, type timer

or stopwatch

to

pull

one

up,

or

type

X

minute timer to automatically start one.

Search

for

flip

a

coin or

roll a

die

when you need to

cast

a

stitch in

time or

any

other

situation

when generating a probability is necessary.

You

can also pull up a quick

reference tip

calculator

with tip

calculator.

This

calculator

feature

can also be useful

for very

important

factoids

like

the

number

of

horns on

a unicorn and the

probability

of once

in a blue moon.

Together

you can use

these

utilities

to

more quickly

access

everyday

information.

While

they

may

not

be

as essential in

the

software

world,

they're

still

going

to

help

you make

better searches in your day to day life.

These are a lot of tools

that

you

can

utilize

to

filter

your

searches

and

operators

become

even

more

powerful when

you're

able to

combine them effectively.

For example,

how

to

build an

asterisk

app

site colon freecodecamp.org

minus Flutter will

give

me results

on any

kind

of

app

tutorial

except

Flutter

on

Free

Code

Camp containing

the

name Quincy

Larson.

Another helpful combination could include the site and

URL and exclusion

operators.

You

can search site

colon

freecodecamp.org

minus

in

URL

blog

to

get

all

the

subdomains

except

blogs or you

can

find

insecure

pages on a website

using

site

colon

domain

name

dot

com

where

you

fill

in

the

appropriate domain

name

minus

in

URL

HTTPS.

I find combining the wildcard

and exact match

operators

to be

very useful.

Quote

python asterisk

tutorial end

quote

will

return

any

results

with

python

and tutorial

in

that order with anything in between.

For

example, python

app

tutorial.

The

wildcard

operators

also very

easy to

include

with

other operators

such

as site

and

in

URL.

You

can

use

parentheses

to

power

up

your

combinations

of

operators.

I

commonly use

these

when grouping for

order of operations with Boolean operators

like

or

or

when

using synonyms.

If

I want

to

specify a bunch of synonyms

when searching

for

a

resume,

I

can

do

that.

Keep

in mind that

the

pipe operator or

or

operator

are

functionally

identical.

Google

processes

and

and

or operators

in

a

logical

order.

Make

sure to

use

parentheses

when

necessary.

For

instance,

Python

and

parentheses

JavaScript

or

TypeScript

parentheses

will

be

interpreted

as

looking for results including

Python

and

either

JavaScript

or

TypeScript.

Alternatively,

Python

and

JavaScript

or

pipe

script

will

return

results

with

Python

and

JavaScript

or

results

with just

TypeScript

not

in

any

way

related

to

Python.

Let's

say

I'm

looking for

tutorials

on the

language

closure

by

linking

together

search

operators.

I'm

able

to

form

a query

which gives

me

only about 100

highly

focused results.

There are

a

practically

endless

number

of

combinations

of

search

operators.

I encourage you

to consider what

will

be most

beneficial

for

your

search

and

mix

and

match

accordingly.

Next

few

parts.

I'm

going to discuss several

features,

specialized

search

options

and

search

related

tools

that

you

might find

helpful.

Since

you've

used

Google,

you're

familiar

with

how

to

search

for

images.

Just

type

in

some

keywords,

click

on

the

images

tab

and

voila.

But

what if you already have the image or in front of it and you need

to

figure out

what

it

is or

where it's

from?

Google

image search and Google lens are

two

powerful

tools

to

accomplish

that.

You

can

access

reverse image search by

clicking the camera

icon

or

visiting

images.google.com.

Upload

or drag

your

image into

the search

bar and

it

will

scan

the

web

for

images

that

look

similar.

For

instance,

I

have

this

image

of

some

phones

on

a

yellow

background

that

I

pulled

off

of

unsplash

and

used

in

a

blog post.

I can upload

it

to reverse

image search

and

see

all

the

other

websites

that

are

using

it

as

part of their articles.

These

include

five

ways

the original iPhone was

ahead

of

its

time.

Apple

now has one billion active iPhones around the

world

and

these

are

the

top

four

highest

selling

iPhones

of all time.

I

can also

filter

for other sizes of

the

image

and

photos

that

are

similar.

Plus,

you can

use the

color

drop down

menu under

search

tools

to

filter

photos

by

color,

transparency,

picture

size and

animation effect to find that perfect gift.

This

also

works for faces, clipart

and

line

drawings.

Reverse

image

search is

useful if

you

already

have

a

photo

and

you're

sitting

at

a

computer.

But

what

if

there's

something right

in

front

of

you

that

you

want

to

learn

about?

Perhaps

a

product you'd

like to find

online

or

a

location

you're

at.

Google

lens

is

an

awesome,

relatively

new

feature

which

debuted

in

2017

and

identifies

objects

in

your

camera

lens

in

real

time.

Here,

I'm

using it to take a picture of

my

desktop speakers.

Google

lens quickly identifies their Logitech

speakers

and

pulls

up

search

results

of

their

pricing

and availability.

You

can use Google lens to search for homework

out

or excerpts

of

books online

and

copy

text

from

physical

documents,

similar to

Apple's live

text feature.

I'm

a particular fan of their real

time

translate function.

I

can

point

my

camera

at

a menu

in

a foreign language

and

receive

a

version

in

my

preferred

language.

These

image

search

options may be more helpful in

your

daily

life

than

for

software development,

but

they're

incredibly useful tools

to

have

in

your search

arsenal.

Everything

that

Google

indexes

is

known

as

the

visible

web,

but

sometimes

you

need

to

delve

deeper.

This

is

usually because of the

long tail.

Many

people treat Google as the all-encompassing

internet.

If

you can't find it on Google, it

simply

does not

exist.

But

that's not entirely the case.

Before

anything else, make sure

the reason

you're

not seeing any results isn't

just

what you searched.

A

lot

of times, the issue is

information retrieval,

not the indexing

of

the

information

in

the

first

place.

If

you

have

a

hyper-specific

query,

every

word

that

you've

added

makes

it

more

likely

that

you've excluded

results.

Try

broadening

your search, and it's possible that

what

you're

looking for will pop

up.

While

Google tries their best to index

everything

that

can

be useful,

the

web

is

a

large

and

complex

place.

In

Google's best efforts

to fight spam,

content can be missed

that

may

be

important

in

more

niche scenarios, seen in

things like their indexing

of large

websites

with

too

many

subdirectories

or subdomains.

In

attempting to

cut

back

on

duplicate

content,

Google

has,

in

some

cases,

completely

wiped

content

off their

SERPs.

Sites

like GitHub or offenders here,

where some repositories can

no

longer be

found

on

Google

because

they're older and unused.

But

while Google's better

than ever for the majority of

searches,

in

niche

cases,

when

there's

less

data to work

with, you could

even find nothing.

In

these cases,

you'll

want

to

consider

trying

alternative

search

options

that

specialize

in

the area

that

you're looking for.

Google

actually

provides

a few

of

its

own

for

more

niche

areas.

Google

Scholar

is

a

massive collection of

scholarly

literature

from

the

global

scientific

community,

and

it

is an amazing research for serious

research.

It

is primarily made up of papers

published in respected

journals

spanning

everything

from

biology to neuroscience

to

machine

learning and

natural

language

processing

to

legal

opinions.

It

also

includes

scholarly

sites and content from

universities.

Scholars

particularly

useful

when

conducting

more

thorough

research

on

an

academic

topic

with

some major perks over traditional search.

To

start, it

provides links that

direct

to the

full

version

of

scholarly

articles,

books,

and

reports.

Scholar

enables

you to see the number of citations papers

have,

where

they're

published,

and

any

related

authors

or affiliated

institutions.

It

also

has

built-in

options to

copy

citations

and export

bibliographies in

formal

MOA,

APA,

BibTex

format.

You

can even dive deeper into

individual authors and view

their

aggregate

work.

It's

similar to other academic search engines such

as

Papers

with

Code,

Web

of

Science,

and

Scopus.

While

the process

of entering a query is

the

same as

with

normal

search,

the

results

page

is

a little bit different.

If

I search

natural

language

processing,

you

can

see

that

the

result

blocks

now

each

contain

bibliographic

info.

This

includes the

title of the article, the source, the author, or

authors, when

it was

published,

and

who

it was published

by.

Some

results will even have options to see the

abstract or

even

download

the

full

document

as

a PDF.

The

version you see in Google Scholar

may not always be the final paper.

Google

does its

best to show

the

newest,

freely available

version,

which often

means a preprint.

Adding a

year

or

restricting

by

a

date

range

in your search

can

be

very

useful

in

getting

more

recent findings.

Try and make

use of some of the operators we

discussed

before, including

AND, OR,

exclusion,

and

exact match operators.

For

instance, Neuroscience

author, quote Seth Golden,

end

quote

2022,

will

pull

up

my

recent

paper

on analyzing EM images,

or

quote

machine

learning,

end

quote,

minus

medicine,

minus

biology,

will

return results

or ML papers

that

don't

have

it

to

do

with

those

sub

areas.

Google

Scholar

is

not

infallible.

Expression

data is often not fully

comprehensive

or

up

to date.

Using

the verification skills

that

I discussed

earlier,

try

to

check

out

the original

publisher,

as

well,

to

check

your

findings.

Google

also

supports

a

powerful

patent

search

available

at

patents.google.com.

You can search Google

Patent

Search or Google

Patent's

Advanced

Search

on

Google

for

more

options

and

filters.

Using

this

tool,

you

can

find

information

on

patents

searching

by

title,

number,

inventor,

signee,

and more.

Google

currently keeps

track

of patents in

North America,

Europe,

and

Japan.

It's

a great resource for anyone researching patent

information,

which

may

not

be

readily

available

in

a

general

search.

If

you're unfamiliar with common browser keybinds, I'll share a few.

These

are generally the same across all browsers and

massively

increase

productivity.

Replace

Control

with Command and Alt with Option if

you're

using

macOS.

As I

mentioned in

part 3, Control-Click

opens

a link

in

a

new

tab.

Control-T

opens a new tab.

Control-W

closes the

current

tab.

Control-Shift-F

or Alt-F focuses the

search bar.

Control-R

refreshes the page.

Control-Alt-R

hard refreshes

the page from

origin.

And

Control-F

searches for

text

within

a

web

page.

This

last

one is super critical

to efficient searching.

I

constantly

use

Control-F

to find

the

content

that

I'm

seeking

on

a

web

page.

It

saves

tons

of

time

that

I'd

otherwise

spend

skimming

information

that's

potentially

unrelated

to what

I'm looking for.

Knowing

these keyboard shortcuts

will

hopefully

help

you

navigate

the

browser

and

complete

searches

faster.

Congrats!

You're

now

all powered up

and

ready

to

go

and

get

the most

out

of

Google.

That

puts

you

ahead

of

most

of

the

other

27

million

developers

in

the

world.

Is

that statistic real?

Try

and search for yourself.

I

encourage

you to consider how you

can

combine everything

that

I've

discussed

in

this

video

to

obtain the best answer to your question.

Start

with

a simple search.

Use

specific terms to

narrow focus,

but avoid

unnecessary

redundant

terms.

Put

yourself in

the

mindset of

the person

writing your

answer.

Break

down

multi-part

queries

into several

searches.

Verify

your results.

Browse

laterally.

Use

search

operators and

take

advantage

of

specialized

search

engines.

Searches will sometimes be simple.

Other

times, you'll

be deep in the weeds.

Online

detective work

can

be

hard.

My

last

and

most

important

piece

of advice,

don't

give

up.

It

might take

two

searches,

or

three

or

six.

Rephrase

your query

and

try

again.

You

have

access

to

all

of

human

knowledge.

Take

advantage

of

it.

Thank you for

listening to this video course.

I

hope it was of some help to you.

After

finishing this course,

do you feel

like

you

all

approach

search

differently?

I

want to thank

the

amazing people at Free

Code Camp who

supported

the

development

of

this

course.

Additionally,

my

appreciation

goes

out

to

Google

search

intern

Eric

Bosen,

Lincoln

Baxter,

and

several

Google engineers

who

requested

their names

remain

private

for

reviewing

the

course

material

and

helping me

make

it

the

best

possible. Thanks all folks.