Google® Business Solutions All-in-One For Dummies®

Chapter 1. A Smart Tour of Google Search

In This Chapter

• Searching with Google

• Exploring the free search results

• Fine-tuning your searches

• Using Advanced Search techniques

A lot of search engines are available on the Internet, but to many people, Google is the only search engine. About two-thirds of all searches are done through Google. The remaining search engines have survived by making themselves more and more like Google. So if you understand Google search and make it work for you, you've done just about all you need to do in the world of search.

In this chapter, we take a close look at Google search — both to make you a better Google searcher, which is important for some of the endeavors in this book, and to understand how you can make it easier for customers to find your business by using Google.

Using Google Search

The classic Google search starts at the main Google search screen, as shown in Figure 1-1. It's worth taking a close look at what users see when they use the screen.

Figure 1-1 shows Google's search screen — perhaps the most-seen screen ever on the Web!

The first thing to notice is how little there is to notice. There are 31 words on the screen in Figure 1-1, almost all of which are links.

The page, being almost all text, loads very quickly. The people at Google put tremendous effort into making things go fast. They believe that a faster response makes a difference not just of degree, but also of kind. (A search that's 10% faster might be slightly better; a search that's ...