Getting the best from Google Searches

OK - I am no expert on techho things.  But I thought you might be interested in a few easy tips for improving your Google search results.  I poked around on the net to find an article for you but the ones I found were very geeky.  So here goes, in my own words.

• If you want Google to only find sites with a particular word in them put + followed immediately by the word eg +search

• If you want Google to find you sites with a particular phrase, put that phrase between quote marks eg "searching Google"

• If you are getting too many results that are irrelevant you could try adding a word or words for Google to exclude.  You do this by putting a minus sign directly before the word eg if you wanted results about Searching Google that didn't include SEO information you would put "Searching Google" -SEO

• My last tip, is about using what is called a tilde (who knew).  I found it on the keyboard on the left hand side just above Tab.  It looks like this ~ .  This is a really useful one - if you put it before a word you are searching Google won't just search that particular word but all other words that it believes means the same.  So if you were searching for "can opener" for instance if you put ~can opener, Google would also look for tin opener.

Happy searching.  And apologies to all of you for whom this is old hat.