Everyone knows what a Google search is, but most of us just type a few words into the search box and then sift through page after page of results. Google offers much more than this simple “brute force” keyword search, for those who learn to use a very easy to use tool called Google Advanced Search.

No programming expertise is required at all. Of course you can memorize a series of individual commands, if you like. (It reminds me of the “old days” of MS-DOS). Or if you like things to be really simple, as I do, you can use Google Advanced Search to gain access to Google’s vast storehouse of information.

Whether you are looking for general information, or are doing research for your SEO Strategy, you find a wealth of free tools to help you, inside Google. Click on Advanced Search on the right hand side of the Google search page, or type www.google.com/advanced. You will find many options on this page, but most of the time you will only one of a few of them together.

Let’s look at the options line by line.

The basic boolean AND, OR type options allow for either / or phrases. Note: the default Google search is AND. There is a pull-down for language choice. (Google frequently adds new languages.)

The next choice is file type. Any file type can be researched, or the search can be narrowed for specific Adobe files, or Microsoft Office Document types.

Search can by any date, or within the last 3, 6, or 12 months.

Numeric criteria can be used, such as items within a certain price range.

You can then look anywhere on the page, or restrict search to the title of the web site, the URL, the text body, or the links. This is a very good option for doing SEO Strategy keyword research on your competitors, since you can analyze where top ranking sites are using their keywords most effectively.

For most SEO strategy purposes, you will find that the keywords in the Title have the most impact on search engine position, followed by link text, and then body text keywords.

Searches can be made specific to a certain web site domain name.

Searches can be restricted to types of usage and sharing rights.

Safe Search can be enabled to eliminate junk results.

In the Page Specific Box, a search can be limited to pages that are similar to a given page, or ones that link to a certain page.

There is also a information resource option, that can restrict the search to very specific sources. These are listed below.

Google Books
Google public source program code
Google scholarly research papers
Google news, (current and archived)
Mac search
BSD Unix
Linux
Microsoft
US Government
University search - for a specific school's web site.

The Google Advanced Search page offers a multitude of options that can be used independently or in combination to greatly enhance the ability to restrict search to a manageable size.

Most of these options are available as individual commands from the regular search boxes, but the Advanced Search Box is much easier to remember than the individual commands. It also allows for a simple way to use the criteria in combination, something that can be quick tricky from the command line.

I hope some of this information will help you with your current SEO Strategy. Good Luck !

John Lombaerde is a CAD/CAM/CNC Specialist with over 20 years experience in advanced manufacturing technologies. He is a Designer, CNC Programmer, CNC Machinist, a CAD/CAM consultant, and SEO Strategy consultant.

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