Adding one word to your Google searches will help find solutions faster.
The next time you’re pulling your hair out over a technical support issue, you might want to try this simple trick to help you find real answers to the problem you’re experiencing:
Add “solved” to your search query. Rather than just describe your problem, i.e. “Outlook won’t sync to my Droid smartphone,” try adding +SOLVED to the end of the search. Many tech support message boards use “[SOLVED]” to close threads on technical support issues.
One other trick is to use ~solved instead of +solved. Using the “~” (the tilde) tells Google to not only look for “solved,” but also synonyms for solved, such as “fixed,” “resolved,” etc.
Some other tips include:
Search social media: Put @ in front of a word to search social media. For example: @twitter.
Search hashtags: Put # in front of a word. For example: #throwbackthursday
Search for related sites: Put “related:” in front of a web address you already know. For example, related:time.com.
Getting great results from Google is usually a matter of writing better queries. Here’s a helpful article on ways to improve your search skills, straight from Google:
http://www.google.com/support/websearch/bin/answer.py?answer=136861
