Andrea Ng Internet/Online Marketing Discovery: Google search commands and codes

First, the Basics of Google Search Parameters:

Double quote mark (") is used when you want to search word for word, the exact phrase. Eg you want the word "delicious curry mixture" to appear word for word in the entire WWW, whether it appears in the web address, or email address, or picture name, or any corner on the website as text.
If you just want all the search words to be present, not caring about the order, you can use the plus sign (+) is treated as AND. Eg. facial + tissues + packaging. In this way, as long as those words appear, in any order on any corner of the website, it will show up as a result.
Minus sign or hyphen (-) with space in front means to exclude that word from your search result, aka it is treated as a negative word. Eg. tennis -balls, your results will generate anything that matches tennis except for tennis balls.
But if there is no space infront of the hypen, it means it is part of the word. eg ice-cream, "cream" is not treated as a negative word, therefore results will pull up the words "ice-cream".

For SEO

IN ADDRESS BAR:
Note which country version of Google you are in. Click on "Google.com" below to go to USA. You can also add "geo=LOCATION" to specific the country you want the result to come from. Using "geo=SG" pulls up results from "Singapore" also.
Use hl=eng to get sites in English.
If we want to find duplicate articles as ours, please note that Google automatically filters out duplicate content, we can then use - filter=0 to switch off this function.
Add &pws=0 to the back of your web address bar after you search. This turns off Google personalization of search results. Enter this "http://www.google.com/search=?&pws=0" on your address bar instead of the usual google.com.
IN SEARCH BAR:
Find competition sites that uses your keyword in their titles, url, page text and tags, and anchor text : intitle:"keyword keyword", inurl:"keyword keyword", inpage:"keyword keyword", inanchor:"keyword keyword"
One important way of finding quality backlinks is to know what are those links that Google actually take into account for our competitors. So the easy way is to do a backlink search on Google for the keyword we are targetting.
Check backlinks on Google Webmaster Tools, Yahoo Site Explorer, Open Site Explorer. Or use the inanchor:"keyword keyword". Or check who links to your competitor by using link: "domain.com". Note there is a space after link: .
To check backlinks for your site and yet not want to include results from your own site, add "-site:yourownsite.com"

Andrea Ng Internet/Online Marketing Discovery