When using Google there are many ways to find the information you are looking for. You can format your search using some of the tips listed below to enhance your search experience.
To check if your website is in Google's Index: Go to Google and enter the following text site:YourSite.com.
Google (works with Yahoo also) Reciprocal Links Syntax: Enter the following within the search engine's search field: link:www.confidtech.com.
Phrase search ("")
By putting double quotes around a set of words, Google will consider the exact words in that exact order without any change. Google already uses the order and the fact that the words are together as a very strong signal and will stray from it only for a good reason, so quotes are usually unnecessary. By insisting on phrase search you might be missing good results accidentally.
Search within a specific website (site:)
Google allows you to specify that your search results must come from a given website. For example, schedule site:yankees.com will return pages about the Yankees schedule.
Terms you want to exclude (-)
Attaching a minus sign immediately before a word indicates that you do not want pages that contain this word to appear in your results. The minus sign should appear immediately before the word and should be preceded with a space. For example, in the query [ anti-virus software ], the minus sign is used as a hypen and will not be interpreted as an exclusion symbol; whereas the query [ anti-virus -software ] will search for the words 'anti-virus' but exclude references to software.
Fill in the blanks (*)
The *, or wildcard, is a little-known feature that can be very powerful. If you include * within a query, it tells Google to try to treat the star as a placeholder for any unknown term(s) and then find the best matches. For example, the search [ Google * ] will give you results about many of Google's products. Note that the * operator works only on whole words, not parts of words.
Search exactly as is (+)
Google employs synonyms automatically, so that it finds pages that mention, for example, childcare for the query [ child care ] (with a space), or California history for the query [ ca history ]. But sometimes Google helps out a little too much and gives you a synonym when you don't really want it. By attaching a + immediately before a word (remember, don't add a space after the +), you are telling Google to match that word precisely as you typed it. Putting double quotes around the word will do the same thing.
The OR operator
Google's default behavior is to consider all the words in a search. If you want to specifically allow either one of several words, you can use the OR operator (note that you have to type 'OR' in ALL CAPS). For example, [ New York Yankees 2007 OR 2008 ] will give you results about either one of these years, whereas [ New York Yankees 2007 2008 ] (without the OR) will show pages that include both years on the same page.
The symbol | can be substituted for OR. (The AND operator, by the way, is the default, so it is not needed.)
Words that are commonly used, like 'the,' 'a,' and 'for,' are usually ignored (these are called stop words). But there are even exceptions to this exception. The search [ the who ] likely refers to the band; the query [ who ] probably refers to the World Health Organization -- Google will not ignore the word 'the' in the first query.
Synonyms might replace some words in your original query. (Adding + before a word disables synonyms.)
Punctuation in popular terms that have particular meanings, like [ C++ ] or [ C# ] (both are names of programming languages), are not ignored.
The dollar sign ($) is used to indicate prices. [ nikon 400 ] and [ nikon $400 ] will give different results.
The hyphen - is sometimes used as a signal that the two words around it are very strongly connected. (Unless there is no space after the - and a space before it, in which case it is a negative sign.)
The underscore symbol _ is not ignored when it connects two words, e.g. [ quick_sort ].