Google is spending millions of dollars to develop more algorithms, but Google Search still can't determine what you have undefined. Sometimes even though you know the information you're looking for is somewhere on the web, you can't find the right terms searchs to find them.
If you don't know what to look for in Google Search, there are a few tricks which can prove very useful.
Today, we're going to look at a few different ways search to help you search for something you don't know how to describe.
Search by wildcard
Google wildcard search is useful if:
- You don't know a specific word in a phrase you're looking for either
- you want to find many results around a basic phrase.
To search with a wildcard, you need to type an asterisk (*) in the search term you are not sure about.
For example, let's say you've been searching for a song you heard on the radio, but you can't find a specific word. You could type “smoke * water.” Google results will show you results that match the phrase. You will see results like: “Smoke on the water”, “Smoke on the Water (2012 Remaster) by Deep Purple”,“ Smoke, how water filters help reduce it ”and many more related.
Similarly, you can use wildcard in Google Search to search for results around a topic. For example, if you search for "trusted * provider", search results will show you "trusted internet provider", "trusted web hosting provider", "trusted power provider" and more.
Excluding words
If you want to search for something but the results you are showing are not relevant, you can block specific words.
The word exclusion feature is especially useful if your list of results is dominated by irrelevant results. You can exclude one or more words by typing a minus (-) just before the word. 
For example, if you search for "Bayern", almost all the first pages show links to FC Bayern Munich, Germany team football. To see results about the city and not the team, you can type “Bayern -football -soccer -fc” to force Google to skip any soccer results.
Results in a series of numbers
Adding two dots (..) between the search terms will show you results from a specific range of numbers. This search is perfect if you want to search for something in a specific price range or at a specific point in time, but you don't know what to look for.
For example, imagine that you are trying to find something in the Greek history of the 19th century. If you type "Greece 1800..1900”In Google Search, you will have a list of results for the country at that time.
Likewise, you can use the same trick to find something you want to buy that fits your budget. For example, type "smartphone € 100 .. € 200" and you will see product listings and articles for smartphones that cost from 100 to 200 euros.
Around if you don't know most of a phrase?
The solution is to use the term around. Just type in an estimated number of missing bracketed words for example around (10).
So, let's look for a phrase of Odysseus Elytis and specifically, something he said and contains "an olive tree, a vineyard and a boat". So the search term will be: an olive tree, a vineyard and a boat around (10)
"If you disintegrate Greece, in the end you will see that you are left with an olive tree, a vineyard and a boat. Which means: with so much more you can rebuild it. ”
In the search results Google will find the quote you want.
Do you know of any other trick that can make our lives easier? We will be glad to see it in the comments of this post.
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