Why do you need advice telling you how to Google? Finding what you want on the web is a doddle, right? Just type in a few words, click and there’s a glorious list of results.

Yet in spite of Google’s ubiquity, the world’s most popular search engine is far from perfect. With more than 25 billion web pages at its fingertips, it often throws up irrelevant results. Faced with hundreds of useless links, many Googlers simply throw in the towel, or head to the sometimes unreliable Wikipedia, which often appears first on the list of results.

There is a better way. By refining how you search and understanding how to tweak or customise Google, you can find exactly what you want, quickly and painlessly. And if Google still can’t do the job, turn to one of its young upstart rivals.

FOCUS YOUR QUERY

If you’re not getting the results you want from Google – or any search engine – be more specific. First try enclosing your key search terms, such as somebody’s name or an entire phrase, within quotation marks. This tells the search engine to find the words as written, rather than the constituent parts – the singer “Johnny Cash”, rather than being distracted by every Johnny on the web or finance-related sites. This technique drastically reduces irrelevant results.

Google always searches for results that include all the words you specify and in the order you have typed them, so put the most important terms first.

Continuing to add further key words can narrow a search but isn’t always the answer. Be aware of a crucial distinction between search “terms” and search “commands”. Terms are the words that you type into the search slot to describe what you are interested in. Search commands are words or sometimes symbols, known as “operators”, that Google uses to find search results in specific ways.

For example, if you’re researching the original libertines (the free thinkers of the 18th century such as the Marquis de Sade), and not the chaotic Brit-rock band, then don’t confuse the search by adding historical details. Instead, try a basic “operator” to narrow your hunt: for example, place a plus sign in front of a key word that is a must. In this example, try libertines +sade without a space between the command and the desired word. Conversely, a hyphen as prefix to a specific term will ensure that it does not appear in results: –rock.

When key words have several meanings, steer Google’s choices by typing the useful command OR in capital letters between two search terms with a space on either side. So, typing clubs OR diamonds will fetch pages either about social clubs or about gemstones, thus avoiding results mainly relating to playing cards. This is a useful way to hunt for several things at once. The search Belize OR Cuba produces clean results that each relate to one of these countries but without the two terms muddying the waters.

Keen to learn more? The unofficial tutorial at www.googleguide.com contains perceptive advice for novices and expert searchers alike.

ADVANCED SEARCHING

Once you’ve mastered these simple techniques, you can move searching into overdrive. Not sure exactly what you are looking for? Relax, there are operators at hand to help. Placing a tilde (?) in front of a search term forces Google to perform a fuzzier hunt to look for alternative meanings (or synonyms) for that word. For example, “?fruit pie” yields results for apple pie, plum pie and so forth.

Think you can almost, but not quite, remember the name of a website? Typing allintitle: in front of the words you remember (with no space after the colon) brings up only those websites that contain your key words in their title. Want to search within a website for specific content? No problem. For instance, to find InGear’s technology group tests at Times Online, enter site:timesonline.co.uk “test bench”.

Or, if you have found one website of interest and wish to discover more on the same subject, adding the operator related: in front of that site’s URL will produce a list of similar web pages.

If this all sounds too hard to remember, print out the cheat sheet from www.adelaider.com/google and stick it on the side of your computer screen for quick reference. Google’s own tutorial pages (www.google.co.uk/help/refinesearch.html) are pretty basic.

WHAT ELSE CAN GOOGLE DO?

Google isn’t just a search engine – it’s also a calculator, an encyclopedia, a dictionary and your nerdy mate who knows all the answers at the pub quiz. To find a quick fact, enter a wildcard symbol (*) among your terms. For instance, “* bones in the human body” will show that it contains 206.

Alternatively, answers to other common questions can be found by typing in the relevant terms, such as speed of light or population of China. If you want to find the meaning of a word or phrase, or to unpick an acronym, type define: before the term.

Google can also search images, videos, blog posts and recently incorporated YouTube clips into its results pages. For a full roundup of features visit Google’s own guide (www.google.co.uk/intl/en/help/ features.html) or this exhaustive amateur effort (tinyurl.com/t5p63) compiled by an Italian blogger.

OTHER SEARCH ENGINES

Clever though Google is, dozens of other search engines, such as Yahoo! and Ask, do a similar job. Many specialist engines cover areas such as medicine and law, and can offer better results. The Mamma Health engine (www.mammahealth.com) searches only reputable medical sources, for instance. Visit tinyurl.com/2u8rpx for a comprehensive list.

Another type of service, known as metasearch, pulls together results from different search engines. For instance, Dogpile (www.dogpile.com) sends your request to the four largest search engines, plus a few tiddlers. Results are spoilt only because they are mixed with paid-for sponsored links.

Crawl (www.crawl.com) is a metasearch engine with a clever twist: it pulls results into a preview box so you can navigate around the sites to find what you’re looking for, while remaining on the Crawl homepage.

Clusty (www.clusty.com) seeks results from Ask, MSN and Gigablast (but not Google) and “clusters” them into neat clickable categories. This is handy if, say, you want to book a room at the Hilton in Paris. Search for Paris Hilton, then click on the “hotel” category to avoid the inevitable acres of celebrity tittle-tattle.

Quintura (www.quintura.com) takes clustering to the next level, by creating tag clouds. Hover over a keyword and the results on the side of the screen magically change. Awesome.

Collarity (www.collarity.com) uses the so-called “wisdom of crowds” to refine its results, while Ms Dewey (www.msdewey.com) is a search engine with a human face; funny for five minutes, then annoying.