Make Your Holiday Searches Easier with These Handy Google Tricks

It’s the holiday season, so many people will be spending a lot of time online, likely seeking out the perfect gift for everyone on their list. Considering you’re reading this blog, you could be one of them. Do you have the perfect gifts in mind for everyone in your circle, but just can’t seem to find what you’re looking for?

Let’s go over some tricks that Google has baked into its search functionality, and how they could prove handy during your holiday shopping… and your workday, too!

Need to Find Something Specific? Use Quotes

In 1996’s Jingle All the Way, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Howard Langston spent the movie’s runtime desperately searching for a Turbo-Man action figure—the hottest toy of the season—on Christmas Eve after prioritizing his work over all else. While we will always support a healthy work/life balance, we do need to acknowledge that a bit of knowledge about how Google works today can help keep you from ever facing the same threat.

Consider how this movie could play out in the modern day. Let's say that instead of putting off this important gift until the very last second, Langston took a few minutes to do a Google Search and find the Turbo-Man his son wanted. If he knew his son wanted the 12-inch Deluxe Turbo-Man with Turbo-Rang and Jetpack accessories, he could go to Google and find the exact toy he needed by searching for:

“12 inch Deluxe Turbo-Man with Turbo-Rang and Jetpack”

By using quotes, the mattress salesman could easily locate an exact match for this toy.

Similarly, Langston could use this trick to gauge customer interest in or response to the mattresses he has to sell, identifying selling points that previous customers have highlighted.

Want to Avoid Certain Gift Types or Sources? Use the Minus Sign

While gift subscriptions or cards are a perfectly acceptable gift to give someone, they may not be the kind of gift you like giving. Likewise, you may not want to provide business to certain websites or platforms. Unfortunately, Google doesn’t know these things when you start searching for gift ideas. 

Fortunately, by adding a minus sign and a term you don’t want to include in a search, you can prevent any results with that term from appearing on the results page.

If you’ve ever seen National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, you’ve seen how Clark Griswold reacted to his Christmas “bonus” of a voucher for a yearlong membership in the “Jelly of the Month” club. While his boss likely didn’t care to, you can avoid inspiring such a colorful display by searching for something like “gift idea -jelly.”

Of course, this also works for other purposes. Let’s say you were in the market for new computer hardware. You could use the minus sign to clarify what you were looking for more specifically, using “mouse -rodent” instead of having to sift through mixed results regarding both the essential computer peripheral and mus musculus. 

Specify Your Searches to a Single Source

Many people still do a lot of their shopping in person, in brick-and-mortar stores. Of course, the Internet can still be super helpful to even these shoppers as a resource to confirm which stores have what they are looking for. By preceding your search terms with “site:” and the address of the website you wanted to search, you can tell Google to only return results from that specific domain.

Consider a scene from the 1947 classic, Miracle on 34th Street. After stepping in as a last-minute replacement for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade Santa Claus, a Mr. Kris Kringle is hired by the department store to continue playing Santa. While Mr. Shellhammer—the head of Macy’s toy department—wants Kris to recommend toys Macy’s offers, Kris instead directs parents to other stores where each child’s precise wishes can be found. Nowadays, the harried mother looking for a toy fire engine for her son could have simply searched “site:schoenfeldtoys.com fire engine” to confirm the store stocked the right one.

Today, business owners can use this capability to conduct their own market research, tracking what their competitors offer or what has been said about their own brand.

Give Yourself the Gift of Less Stress in the Workplace

Technology is, by definition, intended to make tasks of all kinds easier and less time-consuming to manage, from these simple search tricks to larger business responsibilities. We’re here to help you manage it all for your business.

Reach out at (501) 375-1111 to learn more about how we can help you accomplish your goals with our proactive business technology services.