There are a few simple tricks that can help you narrow down what you are Googling for. Let's just use an example and dive right in.
I'm looking for a band in Chicago called Sugar Beat. So, I start my search like this:
Hmmm... Even though I'm not looking for anything about cooking or food, I do need to trim the fat here.
By placing the words "sugar beat" in quotes, I tell Google that I am looking for this phrase - in other words, do not show me a page that contains sugar AND/OR beat - only return pages that have the words "sugar beat" right next to each other and in that order. Furthermore, let's get rid of the word "sweets" - we do this by simply ending our query with "-sweets" - that's a minus sign, and the word sweets (no space in between). This will help disassociate our search from pages related to food/desert:
This still isn't perfect, but I think you're getting the idea. One thing I want to point out here is that Google ignores punctuation - notice in the above example, that "... sugar. Beat..." turns up. So, if you are writing for search engines and need to use certain keyword phrases, keep in mind that you can use punctuation within your keyword phrase without risk.
Also, note that you can subtract more that one word from your query like this:
"sugar beat" chicago -sweets -cookies
So, if we can remove words from our queries, can we remove phrases? Yes, just put a phrase in quotes:
"sugar beat" chicago -"sweet tasty goodies"
And if we can subtract, surely we can add - right? You betcha - this next query will only return pages that have the phrase "sugar beat" along with the word music, but that do not have the word sweets:
Now we're getting closer! That first site listing looks interesting... Can I limit a search to just one website? Sure can:
By simply finishing our query with site:www.songkick.com - we restrict our search to that site.
So, by simply altering our search query in some intuitive ways, you can find what you are looking for faster by either filtering out, or forcibly including, keywords & phrases into your search. I do this so much it's become second nature - hope you find it useful too!
