Faster Web Searching With Dashes

Posted on April 15, 2007

Steve Rubel blogs about how web searching by using dashes instead of quotes can save you time. For example, if you are looking for Clifford the Big Red Dog using big-red-dog instead of "big red dog" will return the same results in most search engines. It works in both Technorati and Google Blog Search. It doesn't seem like much but the time can really add up as Steve Rubel explains.

However, don't laugh. This tiny trick saves me lots of time over the years. Consider this. According to my Google search history I have performed a staggering 31,000 searches over the last two years since they added this feature. Many of these are phrases. Let's argue it's half of them. If I save 0.5 seconds thanks to the dashed-search technique and multiply it times 15,500, I calculate that I have saved 7,500 seconds. That adds up to 125 minutes or two hours! That means I saved at least an hour a year. Plus, that's not counting the tons of other searches on sites the Google history doesn't track.
Your mileage may vary but give it a try.

Saving an hour a year isn't much but every little bit helps. Plus, you don't have to use the shift key. A comment left on Rubel's post says that a period will also work instead of a dash. Also, some people are saying it may not work for all searches.