How to Search with Google Search

How to Search on Google Search

Google Search’s popularity lies in its simplicity and ease of use. It doesn’t have too many fancy bells and whistles to fool around with… not that you’ll need to do so, though. Google Search will usually do the heavy lifting for you, giving you suggestions on what you might be searching for, or letting you go straight to the most relevant result with a single mouse click. If you want to search for something besides a web page, you can do that, too.

Usually, Google Search will display search results based on how relevant they are to your search terms, with the first terms holding the most relevance and the later terms holding lesser relevance. For example, searching for “turtle and hare” will give you slightly different results than searching for “hare and turtle” because of how Google Search prioritizes the words “turtle” and “hare” in each case. Also, Google Search will usually prioritize key terms and not smaller words such as “and”, “for”, “but”, or “the”.

How to Use Google Search

1. Type www.google.com into your web browser’s address bar.

2. Click inside the search box highlighted in the screenshot below, and then type in what you want to search for.

3. For this step and the next, we’ll assume that the “Instant Results” feature is turned on. (You can turn it off by going to Settings > Search Settings. See our Google Search Settings tutorial to see exactly how to do it.)

As you type in your search terms, Google Search will try to guess what you’re searching for. Possible search terms will show up in a drop-down menu below the search box. You can click one to search for that term, or if you move your mouse over it to highlight it and then click I’m Feeling Lucky, you will go straight to the web page that Google Search ranks as the most relevant result for that search.

If none of the suggestions match what you’re trying to search for, click the search button or press the “Enter” key on your keyboard to search for exactly what you typed in.

4. Either clicking a search term or confirming a custom search will display results below the search box. Additionally, if Google Search can reasonably figure out what you’re trying to search for as you type it in, it will automatically display relevant results. Click on one of the large headings highlighted in blue to go to that web page.

5. You can scroll to the bottom of any results page for a few more options. First, you can see popular searches that are related to what you’re looking for. Click a word or phrase highlighted in blue here to try a new search with those terms.

More importantly, you can switch between pages of results (since Google Search only fits a certain number of search results on each page). Click Previous to go to the previous page of results, or click Next to go to the next page of results. Additionally, you can click any of the numbers in the graphic to jump to a specific page of results.

6. You can also find a few options at the top of any results page. Click Web (pages), Videos, Images, Books, etc. to look for content in that form that is related to your search terms.

You can also click Search Tools for a few more options, like only getting search results that were created within a certain time period (last week, last month, last year, etc.), or that match your search terms word-for-word.

And those are the basics of how to search for something on the Internet using Google Search!