Tips for successful Google, Bing and Duck Duck Go searches

1. Search within a site

To search for information within a given site, you must type in the search bar the name of the portal after the text “site”. Thus, for example, if you want to search for information about a particular topic that was specifically published on a news page like this one, for example, you would have to write the topic you are looking for and then clarify “site: infobae.com”

2. Searches for specific phrases

For these cases, quotation marks must be used. Thus, if you are looking for information on a particular issue, you have to put all the terms in quotation marks. That way, only the data linked to the reference topic is filtered out and not the data that has each of the words in the subject. Example “Frida Kahlo's house”.

3. Definition of a particular word

If you look up the dictionary definition of a particular word, just type the following formula: “define house”.

4. Find weather information

To find out what the weather conditions will be like for the day or the next few days, you have to type “weather” in the search box and the system, which detects the user's location, will display the desired information.

5. Search by file type

You can also filter searches by file type. For that, you have to put the theme in question and then the term “filetype” followed by the required extension. Example: “vulnerabilities, filetype: pdf”. This will display all pdf files that have information about vulnerabilities.

6. Search by date

It is possible to narrow the search by including dates. The three search engines mentioned above offer the option, although the way to access this tool has small variations.

In the case of Google, just below the search bar you have to press where it says “tools” and a submenu will appear with three options, one of them is “any date”. It is pressed there and the desired range is selected.

In the case of Bing, the legend “date” appears directly below the search bar and the same happens in Duck Duck Go, although in this case the legend is “anytime”. You click there and determine the search intervals you want to do.

7. Exclude certain information

If you want to search for information excluding any related data, then you must use the minus sign in the formula that you type in the search engine. For example, if you type “(“social networks”), -Instagram”; the system will provide information that excludes the term after the “-”, which in this case is Instagram.

8. Calculator

The search engines have a built-in calculator, so that when you type the formula for the account you want to make, the system automatically opens the calculator and provides the result.

9. Switch from one currency to another

Tango Google and Bing have a built-in currency converter that, after writing the figure together with the currency to which you want to convert, return the result directly. DuckDuckGo does not have this option but, like any search engine, it refers to pages that can do this job.

Hidden tricks and surprises in Google

The search engine has several hidden secrets or easter eggs that are triggered by simply using a keyword or phrase.

1. Games

Some of the surprises that the search engine hides are games. To activate them, just type their names into the search engine and immediately a digital version of the game will appear to start playing.

Below are the names that can be typed in the search engine. In some cases they are only activated if the name is written in English, in other cases, you can also type the name in Spanish.

Zerg rush

Pacman

Tic Tac Toe

Play snake

Lonely

Minesweeper

2. Interesting facts

To find interesting facts or fun facts, just write “fun facts” or “fan facts”. The system will offer a summary of interesting facts to entertain the reader.

3. A 360-degree turn

When typing the phrase “Do a barrel roll”, the search engine will make a 360 degree turn. An entertaining trick that will surprise more than one.

4. The Batsignal

The search engine usually includes surprises linked to premieres, historical data or other relevant topics. In this case, a few days before the premiere of Batman, Google included a new trick. When typing “Batsignal” in the search engine you have to look for the flickering Batman icon and press on it, you will see the hero's shadow cross the screen.

DuckDuckGo

Here are some specific features offered by Duck Duck Go, which can be very useful.

1. Bangs

Bangs allow you to search for information directly on a website. While it is possible to do this search by including the formula “filetype: site name”, as mentioned above, it can also be done with the exclamation mark and the initial letter of the site in question. There are several places that have their bangs. In the case of YouTube, for example, you have to use! yt; in amazon's:! to. To see the available bangs you must enter here.

2. Generate QR codes

The search engine allows you to generate QR codes in just one click. If you want to generate this type of code for a web page, then you have to type in the qr search engine, followed by the url and the system will generate the code, which can be scanned and shared.

3. Find HTML codes easily

To find HTML codes for different characters, simply enter “html chars” and the system will return a list with codes for different characters.

4. Acortar left

To shorten links without having to go to third-party pages, just type “shorten”, followed by the link you want to shorten and the system will return a reduced link, ready to copy and paste.

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