Top ways to Google like the experts

WANT to be a pro web surfer and part of the "Google 1 per cent"? Do their class or just check out these top tips.

Google power search

SO you want to be a top web surfer, part of the "Google 1 per cent"?

You’ll have to sign up for the search giant’s free online video tutorial “Power Searching with Google” or else find someone who’s already done it.

The Atlantic’s Rebecca Greenfield is just such a person and has published what she learnt in some recent classes given by a lead Google research scientist.

Daniel M. Russell, who is billed as “Uber Tech Lead, Search Quality & User Happiness”, runs the courses to help users refine their searches from the thousands of results out there.

While some of the techniques may be familiar, the key is playing around and using them in different combinations to build a sophisticated search.

Among the tricks are limiting your search to a particular site using the site search function. For instance you can find all the results on news.com.au for a particular topic by including “site:news.com.au” in the search bar.

And if you need to know more about a particular image – useful when there are fake pictures purporting to be from natural disasters – you can do this too using the camera icon in the Google image search box.

Want to filter out a particular term or site? Use the minus command ("-") in the box. So if you don’t like bananas do your search "-bananas".

Beware: If you do sign up for the next classes there will be homework.