Guide

4 Google search tricks that find what you actually want

Published 21 October 2026

A dark search window showing a Google search that combines site:reddit.com, a quoted phrase, before:2024 and a minus sign

Short answerUse site: to search one website, filetype:pdf for real guides and papers, a minus sign to remove a word, and before: or after: to limit the date. Stack them to get real opinions with fewer ads.

Most people type a question into Google and scroll. Four small additions change what comes back. They are called search operators, and they work in the normal search box.

1. site: searches one website only

Put site: and a website in front of your words, and you only get results from that site:

Google search

site:reddit.com best budget laptop

This is the fastest way to read what real people say about a product. It also works for news sites, forums, and the official support pages of a company.

2. filetype: finds documents, not product pages

Add filetype:pdf and you get real guides, papers and manuals instead of shop pages:

Google search

solar panel buying guide filetype:pdf

It also works with filetype:xlsx for spreadsheets and filetype:pptx for slides.

3. A minus sign removes a word

Put a minus sign directly before a word, with no space, and pages with that word are left out:

Google search

jaguar speed -car

Now you get the animal, not the car. Use it when a word has two meanings.

4. before: and after: limit the date

Add a year and you only get pages from before or after it:

Google search

best phone camera before:2024

after:2024 works the other way. It is useful when old advice is out of date, or when you want what people said at the time.

Stack them

You can combine operators in one search. Real people, real opinions and far fewer ads:

Google search

site:reddit.com "air fryer" before:2024 -sponsored

The quotation marks keep the words together as one phrase. Results depend on what Google has, so if a search returns nothing, remove one operator and try again.

Let an AI chatbot build the search for you

If you cannot work out which operators to use, describe what you want and ask:

Prompt

Turn this question into a Google search that uses operators like site:, filetype:, quotation marks, a minus sign and before: or after:. Give me three versions, from narrow to broad. My question: [WHAT YOU WANT TO FIND]