Knowing how to use google for research can be invaluable. The data businesses gather from market research through the world’s most popular search engine can be an asset.

These days the term “research” is synonymous with Google. If you ask your intern to do some market research on a new product, the first place they’ll turn to is Google. And that’s great because like the Wizard of Oz, it has plenty of answers and tricks up its sleeve. If you know what they are and how to use google for research, you can market research much more effectively.

How to use google for research: Relevant results

Sometimes your brand name can have more than one meaning. That is bound to confuse internet search engines, and you end up getting a bunch of results that aren’t relevant to what you’re looking for. The best way to avoid that is to exclude certain keywords.
You can do that by adding a minus before the keyword you don’t want results for. For example, if you’re searching for Apple products and not the fruit, then search:
Apple –fruit

How to use google for research: Find pages that don’t link back to you

One way to better understand your audience is to review traffic sources in an analytical software or service like Google Analytics. With that data, you can find out how people are finding you, what they’re saying about you, and use that information to grow traffic. However, not all publications and blogs will link back to your website.

But you can still find mentions of your business using a little-known trick. On Google, type intext: before your brand name to filter out results that mention it but don’t link to your website. You can contact those sites to backlink you, and offer to give more information if they want to expand their content. Because higher backlinks boost Search Engine Optimization (SEO), it’s well worth the effort.

How to use google for research: Indexed pages

If your website has a 100 web pages, ideally you want all 100 of them to come up on Google. But that may not be the case. To find out which pages are indexed on Google, type insite: before your domain. Something may not be right if you find pages that aren’t linked in search results. So go through your Google Search Console to find out why.

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