Make Google Search Better

1. Use a Toolbar
   Don't bother typing in google's homepage www.google.com or setting it to your homepage. Just download the google toolbar [inbuilt in Firefox and Opera].And for Internet Explorer[IE] just log on to toolbar.google.com For Yahoo! search toolbar head to toolbar.yahoo.com.
2. Filtering Search Results :
   Google and Yahoo! don't have parental control, but you can control what you are exposed to! If you don't want obscene images turning up an image search, for example set your Google preferneces to "use Strict filtering." The google preferences link is to the right of the search bar on www.google.com
3. Excluding Unwanted Results #1
   The "-" (minus) sign is used to exclude certain words from your search. If you want to search information about 5.1 Speaker sets, you'll probably get a lot of results about other speaker configurations. Instead of "5.1 speakers" try "5.1. speakers -2.1 -3.1 -4.1 -6.1 -7.1".
4. The Use of Quotes :
   Use quotes as often as possible for most relevant results, and for your desired results to appear as high up in the list as possible. For example if you want to know who the Time Man of the year 1990 was, it's better to type in "time's man of the year" in the quotes followed by "1990" (with or without quotes), rather than just "times man of the year 1990" without any quotes!
5. Using the Cached feature
   If a result is taking too long to open, and the information you need doesn't relate to time (as in news items), use the "cached" link(if there is one) after the result. This will certainly load, since google and Yahoo! are almost never down!
6. Personalised Search
   If you want your search to be more and more relevant over time, and if you don't mind google knowing a lot about you, sign in before your search. The sign-in link is at the top right hand corner of the google homepage, and you'll need to use your Gmail username and password. From then on until you sign out , Google remembers what you searched for and what you clicked , making it possible to give you more accurate, personaliosed search.
   Some may be apranoid about google knowing so much about you, but in some peoples' opinion, "Who cares what a server in California or somewhere knows about me?" its your choice...
   
7. Forget the Dictionary
   Google and replace several other kinds of searches. If you want to know what the time in New York is just now, simply type in "New York time"...Similarly if you want to know the difference between the words "Use" and "Usage", you needn't go visit an e-dictionary;Simply type in "use usage" into Google & you'll get results directly from dictionaries and thesarusi! Note that while Google does the Job, Yahoo! won't while MSN brings up the required result second, which is quite nearby there.
8. Force keywords
   Not all words mentioned in the Google search bar come up in the search results. This is especially true for searches with many keywords.It suffices to say that it's Google's way of giving you the most relevant results.To force a certain keyword or phrase to be included in the search, use the "+"(plus) sign. For example, Typing in "favourite example hardware sata mouse"(w/out quotes) will bring some results without one or more of those words. If you need the word "example" (which is a common word and hence Google may leave it out) type "favourite+example sata hardware mouse".
9. Excluding Unwanted results #2
   To exclude irrevelant results try using more extra keywords. For e.g. if you want information about the fruits mango, banana and grapes... you might enter these words in say Yahoo! You'll be amazed to see tht you'll end up with many other fruits in your results approximately 84,000 results on Yahoo! But typing in "Mangoes apples bananas -pears-grapes-cherries-watermelons-pinapples-litchies-oranges" (without quotes) will bear only 1,100 results!...Ofcourse this is just an example on how you can drastically trim down your results!
10. Ready Info
    Google has some hidden gems. Amongst these is information about people, countries and such. For example if you want to know when Mozart was born simply type in "Mozart born"{woth or w/out quotes!) and Google will rpesent to you the required birth date.
11. Qucik Definitions
    A very useul command in Google is the"DEFINE" command...If you want to quickly what electromagnetism is simply type in "define:electromagnetism".
12. Searching within the results
    Some sites have a Google search on their homepage, from where you can search for stuff within that site. You don't need to go to that site to get functionality. Simply add "site:www.examplesite.com" to your search terms, and you'll get results on from "www.examplesite.com". You can also specify the domain such as ".edu" this way "admissions scholarship site:edu"
13. Related Sites
    You've probably seen the related "link" after page results in Google. Again you can directly get sites related to a certain sites by typing "related:www.examplesites.com"..for example typing related:www.google.com will fetch you sites like "google.uk, google.in, google.ca" etc.
    
14. Bring up only Certain Filetypes
    If you want results of certain filetypes, such as PDF, you can use "filetype:pdf" before you search query. This will ofcourse return you only PDFs.example "filetype:pdf harry potter" will fetch you all PDFs related with Harry Potter.. You can use this for any file types including MP3 , XLS or anything you want.
15. Putting Document titles to use
    "allintitle" searches for pages that have all your search words in the title of the web page. So if you want sites that have "microsoft" and "knowledge" in the title type in "allintitle:(space) microsoft knowledge"....or even try "allintitle: fun net"..[without quotes]
16. Searching by URLs
    You can also search for terms that occur in the URLs of documents. For example, if you want to find the word "mac" in the sites that have "apple"in the URL, where "mac" may or may not be in the URl, use this "inurl:applemac"...the word apple will then be in the URL. Note that there should be no space between "inurl" and "apple".

Source: http://faq.programmerworld.net/web_publishing/make-googling-searching-better-tips-tricks.html