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As part of the ongoing story, but if it can’t make sense of your word salad and the results miss the mark, a few small commands can clean up the search. Most of the time, Google’s smart enough to understand the jumble of random terms you typed in.
As part of the ongoing story, search for “wireless mouse keeps disconnecting” and Google will look for that specific phrase. It’ll also omit pages that use only some of those words. I recommend using this if you want to search for things like error messages, song titles, and lines you recall from an article. Start with quotation marks when the exact words matter.
In a fresh development, if you want the speed of the jaguar animal and no results about the car brand, try jaguar speed -car. Put the sign right before the word, with no space. A minus sign excludes a word you do not want.
Industry observers note that for example, search site:reddit.com standing desk back pain to find Reddit posts on that topic. You can also search part of a site, such as site:support.microsoft.com BitLocker. Use site: when you want results from a specific source or know where you saw something.
In a fresh development, use filetype:pdf. A search for monthly budget plan filetype:pdf skips many web pages and goes straight to PDF files. Need a manual, report, or guide in a specific file type?
As part of the ongoing story, use before: or after: to narrow down results within certain date ranges. Windows 11 review before:2022-01-01 finds early coverage. Windows 11 patch after:2025-01-01 finds newer pages. To receive very specific results, you can use both commands together to search within a given date range. Dates can help when outdated information gets in the way.
In a fresh development, try site:lego.com “Voltron” filetype:pdf before:2026-01-01. Pretty sweet, right? Think of each command as one more clue that tells Google what you want—and what you don’t. Depending on what results you’re looking for, these tricks work well alone or they can be combined into a fully optimized Voltron search query.
The report highlights that for more fun and helpful tips, tricks, and website and app recommendations, be sure to subscribe to our PCWorld Try This newsletter.
In a fresh development, when he's not on the hunt for the best computer deals he's covering VPNs, productivity programs, laptops, and a wide gamut of consumer-grade devices and programs. Sam Singleton is PCWorld's VPN beat reporter and jack of all trades.