# 6 Tips to improve your search engine results


Search engines are the most commonly used tools by developers when working on solving programming problems.

Routine tasks such as running **“How to”** and **“plugin XYZ for...”** search queries play a significant part in our daily lives as programmers.

Thanks to advanced technologies running behind the scenes, popular search engines like **Google**, **DuckDuckGo** often give a quick and accurate answer to most queries.

Yet, there are many query options you can use to unlock the search engine’s full potential.

### Here are some tips to make the most of your search results :


---

 **1. Asterisk wildcard**
 
This is a very powerful feature for enabling partial search, it can come in handy when you are not sure about the full query or just want to browse a certain topic.

The browser will take the asterisk **(*)** and replace it dynamically with all possible hits.

#### Example


![asterisk.PNG](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1601985682326/6LAnxfpVo.png)

#### Google top results: 
   - How to create pages dynamically in gatsby.js.
   - How to get started with gatsby.js 2 and Redux.
   - How to source content with gatsby.js.
   - How to use images in gatsby.js.
   - How to secure gatsby.js.  
   ----   
 
**2. Colon**

The use of a colon **(:)** enables adding specificity to the query, it tells the browser to run the search term only on a specific website.

#### Example


![colon.PNG](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1601985702497/8xbF4nkQF.png)

The list will contain **only** posts from stackoverflow.com.
At the time of the writing, google found **1.2M** results for the query above.

---

**3. Hyphen**

The hyphen  **(-)** is used to exclude a certain category from the search results, this can be used when a term has different meanings.

#### Example

![hyphen.PNG](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1601985726295/60iRqOZhe.png)

The query above will return all results related to “Mocha” excluding anything related to **-coffee**.  as mocha is a coffee variant.

This query will return results related to **Mocha**, the Javascript testing framework.

---
**4. The "OR" operator**

Yes, OR operator works the same way in google search as in programming languages, this feature enables you, you guessed it, to run multiple queries in a single search term.

#### Example


![or_operator.PNG](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1601985749305/svj1io4Yu.png)

---
**5. Quotes**

Adding quotes **(" ")** around the query tells the search engine to search for that exact term.

**Example:**


![quotes.PNG](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1601985761016/j8HkkL3uI.png)

---
**6. Image size**

Adding image dimensions in your image search query will reduce your search time significantly, this feature allows you to add the **widthxheight** option to your query.

**Example:**


![img_resize.PNG](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1601985787722/q-Y09o-ub.png)

This query will return filtered cat images to **500px width** and **500px height**.


## Conclusion
 
These tips are only a few of very powerful options you can pass to your query, in case you  would like to explore more, here is a link to [google search help documentation](https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/2466433?hl=en) 

> Thank you for reading, if you liked this article, do not hesitate to share it with your friends. 
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Have a nice day!

Imad