50+ Ways to Stop Using Google Like Truck-Stop Gamblers Use Slot Machines
With smarter searches, you’ll get more info and better info—and fewer websites that pay Google for extra hits
Most of us do Google searches like some truck-stop gambler yanking the arm of a slot machine —find a loose search term in your pocket, drop it in the machine, pull the handle, watch the wheels spin, and hope for three cherries and a cascade of silver dollars. More often, the result is a cherry-lemon-bell list of hits that barely fit your needs (if at all) and which are heavily laden with sponsored content—websites that pay Google to steer your searches in their direction, even if they’re not what you want. With a modest number of tricks—offered in the paragraphs below—your searches can become less one-armed bandit and more world-class poker.
I was inspired to write this after reading Card Catalog Substacker Hana Lee Goldin (MLIS)’s itemized list of tools in her 4,000-word essay:
“Google Has a Secret Reference Desk. Here’s How to Use It.”
I highly recommend that any serious researcher or frequent user of search engines read Goldin’s piece from top to bottom. Meanwhile, this Bastiat’s Window essay compresses many of her tips and some others into bullet form (replicated in the following downloadable PDF):
SEARCH MORE, GAMBLE LESS
The format used here on most of the tips below is as follows:
the search string to enter in Google | the topic being researched and/or nature of the output
WORD STRINGS
Quotation marks, minus signs, asterisks, and special commands can vastly improve the quality and precision of your searches.
tariffs reduce economic output | This broad, imprecise search gathers pages mentioning all four words, though not necessarily in that order or in the same parts of the pages—plus sites whose words include synonyms for these terms.
“tariffs reduce economic output” | Quotation marks mean you only want posts that include this exact phrase (which also happens to be an accurate observation on tariffs).
totenkopf -platner | “totenkopf” means you want sites mentioning the insignia worn by the most murderous Nazi concentration camp guards. The minus-sign before “platner” means you DON’T want sites that mention the Maine Senate candidate who tattooed said insignia on his chest.
“the * of artificial intelligence” | Asterisk means you’ll get hits on “the future of artificial intelligence,” “the regulation of artificial intelligence,” “the definition of artificial intelligence,” etc.
“Burkina Faso” OR “Upper Volta” | OR brings up sites that mention the West African country under either its present name and former name.
intitle:“American Eugenics” | This should give you posts whose titles include the expression “American Eugenics.”
inurl:eugenics | This steers you toward sites whose URLs contain the word “eugenics.”
NOTE: In commands using a colon (e.g., intitle:“God laughs” ; inurl:eugenics, filetype:pdf, etc.) there should be NO space between the colon and the search string that follows (including quotation marks). A space renders the command inoperative.
DROPDOWN MENU: ALL RESULTS versus VERBATIM:
After hitting RETURN on a Google search, notice the TOOLS menu on the right. One dropdown offers the default ALL RESULTS or VERBATIM.
“vice president” “heartbeat away” | ALL RESULTS: This offers pages about vice presidents and others who reached the top of the line of presidential succession, etc.—even if the phrases “vice president” and “heartbeat away” are nowhere to be found.
“vice president” “heartbeat away” | VERBATIM: This tends to yield only pages that mention these two specific expressions—not expressions that Google regards as synonymous. VERBATIM is especially useful when searching for obscure quotes, looking for specific names with unusual spellings, doing genealogy, searching legal language.
NOTE: I use “tends to” or “generally” or “should” because none of these tools works perfectly or all the time.
SITE-SPECIFIC
site:realclearpolitics.com gerrymander virginia | Pages mentioning both “gerrymander” and “Virginia”—but only those posted on the RealClearPolitics site.
site:gov covid “lab leak theory” | URLs mentioning the word “COVID” and the exact phrase, “lab leak theory”—but ONLY those published on official U.S. government sites.
“October 7” -site:aljazeera.com | Sites mentioning the exact expression “October 7,” while omitting those published by the mephitic garbage heap known as Al Jazeera.
site:cdc.gov after:2022 -”press release” | Brings up post-2022 posts on the CDC site—but not press releases.
FILETYPE-SPECIFIC
“Electoral College” filetype:pdf | Documents in PDF form that mention the Electoral College. Useful for finding scholarly and other comprehensive documents, rather than blogposts, newspapers, Facebook discussions, graphics, etc.
“trade deficits” filetype:ppt | Sites offering PowerPoint files that mention trade deficits.
“worried well” filetype:doc | Finds MS Word documents that mention the concept of the “worried well.”
NOTE: filetype: also works with Excel spreadsheets (xls or xlsx), plain text files (txt), rich text format (rtf), commas-separated value files (csv), open-document formats (ods, odp), PostScript files (ps), XML documents (xml), and Google Earth files (kml).
TIME-SPECIFIC
Alfred Landon after:2020 | Discussions of the 1936 Republican presidential nominee—but only from sources posted or edited from 2021 till the present.
“Bernie Sanders” “free trade” before:2016 | Sites discussing Bernie Sanders’s anti-free trade views in the years before Donald Trump came to represent opposition to free trade.
“Donald Trump” site:nymag.com after:2014 before:2017 | 2015-2016 articles from leftist New York Magazine. The most iconic hits are Jonathan Chait’s “Donald Trump Is Going to Lose Because He’s Crazy” and “Why Liberals Should Support a Trump Republican Nomination.”
“Charles G. Dawes” 1925..1929 | Info on “Charles G. Dawes,” published in the years in which he was vice president. NOTE: This one doesn’t seem to work for me. I get lots of documents published in other years. Maybe you’ll have better luck.
ANY TIME versus 24 HOURS (or PAST HOUR, PAST 24 HOURS, PAST WEEK, PAST MONTH, PAST YEAR, CUSTOM RANGE). After hitting RETURN on a Google search, notice the TOOLS menu on the right whole default setting is ANY TIME.
“Donald Trump” “Kharg Island” | ANY TIME: Yields pages posted anytime mentioning both Trump and Iran’s oil port.
“Donald Trump” “Kharg Island” | CUSTOM RANGE, 1/1/1980-12/31/1990: Pages mentioning Trump and Kharg Island—but only sources from the 1980s and 1990s. Trump did speak long ago about bombing Kharg Island. CUSTOM RANGE is useful for finding those early quotes and minimizing his more recent quotes.
DISCUSSIONS BY REGULAR FOLKS
“can anyone recommend” “good barbecue” Virginia | Adding “can anyone recommend” should focus your finds on discussions of barbecue joints in Virginia (on Reddit, Facebook, X, etc. You shouldn’t see commercial websites or scholarly papers or newspaper articles and such. You can also use expressions like “does anyone know a good” or “what’s the best.”
@facebook “Virginia barbecue” | Tends to bring up discussion threads on a specific platform about concerning Virginia barbecue. Try it with @x, @reddit, and other social media platforms.
COMBINATIONS
You can combine several of the above functions for super-precise searches. Here are two examples with search strings in quotes:
“vice presidency” filetype:pdf site:edu | Sites mentioning the exact phrase “vice presidency”—but only those containing documents in PDF form on the websites of educational institutions.
intitle:“index of” Brazil filetype:pdf | PDFs whose titles include the expression “index of” and whose text mentions Brazil. “Index of” tends to bring up documents containing lists of articles—including many that don’t normally show up in Google searches.
FINANCIAL UTILITIES
$130 in Euros | Yields the equivalent amount in Euros, according to current exchange rates.
stock MSFT | Gives current stock price for Microsoft, plus history over recent years, movement today, and various other statistical info.
tip for $120.00 | Gives you tip amounts for various percentages.
Toyota $25000..$50000 | Pages that mention Toyotas and some dollar figure between $25,000 and $50,000. It’s likely to mention Toyotas outside of that range, too, but it offers a good start on a search.
MATHEMATICAL UTILITIES
14+(3*17)^3 | Gives you 132,665. That’s 3*17=51. Then 51^3=132651. Then 132651+14=132665.
random number between 12 and 27 to one decimal place | It gave me 21.4 and offered a few alternative numbers.
flip a coin | Shows a coin flipping and landing with either heads or tails visible.
roll a die | Gives an image of a rolling die, eventually settling on one of the six numbers. You can also specify, for example, that it should be an eight-sided die—or two dice.
GEOGRAPHIC UTILITIES
time Mumbai | Tells the local time in Mumbai, India.
sunrise Alexandria, Virginia | Tells what time the sun will rise (Eastern Daylight Time now) and suggests a few places to grab coffee and really enjoy the view.
sunset Dakar, Senegal | Tells the time of sunset in West Africa in Greenwich Mean Time.
gps Honolulu, Hawaii | Delivers GPS coordinates (longitude and latitude).
weather Goose Bay, Newfoundland | Gives tmperature, precipitation, humidity, etc.
LINGUISTIC UTILITIES
define infundibulum | Returns dictionary definition.
how to pronounce szyzygy | Gives you phonetic spelling and an audio button.
translate “The cow jumped over the moon” into Portuguese | Returns “A vaca saltou sobre a lua.”
translate “The cow jumped over the moon” into Armenian | Returns “«Կովը ցատկեց լուսնի վրայով».
VIRTUAL DEVICES
color picker | Offers a color wheel with RGB, CMYK, HSV, and HSL codes.
timer 3 minutes | Gives you a countdown clock.
metronome | Clicks away over a wide range of speeds.
bubble level | Harnesses your phone’s gyroscope to serve as a carpenter’s level.
breathing exercise | Walks you through breathing routines.
run speed test | Google will measure your internet download and upload speeds.
calories cheeseburger | Gives caloric information and relation to size, ingredients, type of bread, etc.
nutritional information cheeseburger | More comprehensive info.
CORPORATE UTILITIES
UA 2157 | For United Airlines flight #2157, this gives current info on gate, arrival time, departure time, delays, and position.
1Z1703750356610584 | Google will recognize this as a UPS tracking number and give your shipment’s status. It’ll similarly recognize FedEx and USPS numbers.
ODDS AND ENDS
what sound does a three-toed sloth make | Gives you an audio and/or video.
maserati vs lamborghini | Gives you a side-by-side comparisons on price, maintenance, engineering, styling, performance, etc.
maserati vs pembroke welsh corgi | Also give a side-by-side comparison—weight, speed, fuel, etc. Pretty funny stuff.
solitaire | Gives you a working solitaire game, without taking you to a third-party site or app. Also works with tic-tac-toe, snake, pac-man and others.
do a barrel roll | Makes your whole screen do a 360-degree spin.
askew | Tilts the contents of your screen just enough to make onlookers go nuts.
Finally, I’ll note that Goldin’s essay offers a list of strategies to avoid—such as “Don’t treat the AI Overview as the answer. She also suggests not limiting yourself to Google, and her article offers a list of specialized search engines that may be better-suited for your particular search needs.
“(I’VE BEEN SEARCHIN’ SO LONG” (Chicago) and “I STILL HAVEN’T FOUND WHAT I’M LOOKING FOR” (U2)
These seemed like good pieces to accompany a post about less-than-ideal Google searches.
In other words, Boolean search logic, correctly used, is still the best way to get answers on the internet while wasting the least amount of time.
By the way quite a lot of this also applies if you are no longer using google as your search engine but are using, say, duck duck go
DDG has a page describing its syntax etc. here - https://duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/syntax
I believe bing is similar but I don't use bing except to search for "how do I not use bing anymore"