SEO is always a topic of discussion, as it’s such a vast topic full of useful information that can help your website rank higher on Google with new consumers.
However, you need to fully understand all of the little contributing factors that Google uses in filtering your searches. Read ahead to learn how to make your searches more specific.
Tilde
Look at your keyboard right now, do you see that little curvy/wavy dash-looking symbol? That’s called a tilde, and it’s going to help you when searching for a specific thing on Google. Here’s how!
The tilde is used when you want the synonyms of a word to also appear in the searches. An example of this would be dance~lessons. When you search for that, you will also get words like classes, and sessions. This will help you see more related results since you’re giving more detail in your search.
Site
Site is only really used when searching for a specific thing on a website. This one could be really helpful to students or fact-checkers, as it will give you the results for the keywords within a website. No more endlessly scrolling through a website in the hopes of finding what you’re specifically looking for.
For example, let’s say I was doing a project on Type 2 diabetes and wanted to see what information Healthline has on it. So, I would search type 2 diabetes site:healthline.com. The top results will be all of Healthline’s articles that specifically talk about type 2 diabetes.
Dashes
Dashing on over to the next symbol, we have dashes. A dash is this symbol - and is used in Google search to exclude certain words from the results. Now you can say goodbye to those unwanted results showing up.
An example for this one would be if I wanted to search for a lion’s mane for reference on a drawing I’m working on. However, there is a jellyfish of the same name. To make sure I don’t get pictures of the jellyfish in my results, I would search lion’s mane-jellyfish.
Vertical Bar
Next on the list, we have the vertical bar or the |. This symbol is used as an alternative to using the word “or” in your searches. You may be asking, “why not just use the word or?” Well, if you use the actual word, then Google will also count that word as one of the keywords it needs to search for. This can lead to inaccurate results. Instead, it’s definitely worth it to use the | symbol in your searches.
Let’s say you’re in the mood for pizza or tacos, and you want to find a restaurant that has both options so you can then decide which one you want. Searching pizza|tacos near me will pull up results containing one or both of those terms so you can read the menu and make your decision.
Continue to Part 2
Want to read more about different symbols you can use to make your Google search more effective? Stay tuned for part 2! You aren’t going to want to just stop here. For more interesting articles to help you out, click here.
