I would bet that the average Google user has not heard about using operators in their search syntax. The most common are the “+” and “-” which mean include and exclude keywords, respectively. Still most users are just used to keying in keywords and just wading through hundreds of search results looking for the ideal match.

The most obvious thing one does when searching on Google is to key in the first word or phrase that comes to mind. How many times have you done this and given too many results, most of which you probably weren’t able to use?

One good searching practice would be to use syntax operators in the search field. This way, your search is limited to display a more manageable number of results. More than that, the results that you will get are more likely to be relevant to what you are actually looking for. Operators let you filter information, and therefore help lessen junk and information overload.

One operator that I find quite useful is related:. What does this do? This query will give you results that are similar to the site or webpage you specify. So for example, if you key in related:www.googletutor.com, what you will get are web sites that are similar in nature to this site.

Take a look at this screenshot:

Apparently we’re related with the official Google blog and Firefox tutor!

Now if you want to search for sites are linking to yours, you can make use of the link: operator. For instance, we search for link:www.googletutor.com and we get these results.

There is an exhaustive list of operators that you can use in limiting your search. You can actually find them at the Google help pages. Bear in mind, also, that you are not limited to using one operator for a single search. In fact, you can use them together and get better search results. Personally, I add operators one at a time, when I don’t find the right results the first few pages.

Though the page linked above gives you an explanation of the operators, it does not tell you all the possible combinations you can use. That’s actually the fun of it–discovering different ways to use the operators and refining each search you conduct.