Using Google Effectively

We all get stuck at some point when writing a piece of code and we turn to the internet for answers. StackOverflow, MDN Docs, YouTube, etc. If it’s a library you are using then you can check the official docs or any community set up for it.

Most of the time, our gateway is through Google, that brings up results for our searches with links to these sites. It can be quite frustrating when not used effectively and you will end up going through a “search hell”.

I will be sharing with you some tips I use when conducting a search on google, which is quite efficient for me.

BASIC OPERATORS.
You use this to add or remove certain words from a search. These are AND, OR, -.

JavaScript AND Java ( includes both words in the results )
JavaScript OR Java, JavaScript | Java ( includes either of the words )
JavaScript-Java ( removes Java from the result )

ADVANCED OPERATORS.

Site. You use this to search for results in a Particular site.

site:mdn.com prototype JavaScript

Related. This shows results for related domains.

related:mdn.com

File type. This operator lets you search on filetypes.

filetype:pdf”Object Oriented Programming “

filetype:docx”cloud computing”

Others File types could include, XLS, PPT, TXT.

WILD CARD.
Sometimes you try to google a problem and you forget a phrase or a word you wanted to include, you can use the Asterisk* as a placeholder for that word or even more than one word.
Example: Coding * my life. Google will look for the best words that could fit in place of the Asterisk and shows you the result. It could be Coding changed my life.

EXACT MATCH.
You use exact search to tell the engine to show results that contains a particular phrase. This is done by putting the phrase in double quotes.