I have put together a list of some basic, more advanced and fun google hacks to help improve and refine your search

An asterisk (*) is used represents any wordGoogle advanced operators help refine searches.

The plus sign (+) is used to force a search of a very common word for example “the” . Use the minus sign (-) to exclude any term from your search. Dont put a space after these signs.

Searching  for a particular phrase, put double quotes(” “) each side of the phrase.

A full stop (.) is used to represent any single character.

More advanced operations need to use a syntax :

operator:search_term

Again don’t put a space between the operator, the colon, and the search term.

The site: operator is instructing Google to restrict a search to a specific web site or domain. Type the website URL after the colon.

The intitle: Google  searches for a term within the title of a document.

The filetype: operator instructs Google to search only within the text of a particular type of file. The file type to search must be supplied after the colon. Don’t put a full stop (.) before the file extension.

The inurl: operator instructs Google to search only within the URL (web address) of a document. Place your search term directly after the colon

The link:  Google  searches within hyperlinks for your particular search term.

The cache: operator displays the version of a web page as it appeared when Google crawled the site. Type the website URL after the colon.

And now for some fun ones

Type xx-klingon in google and click I’m feeling lucky (http://www.google.com/intl/xx-klingon/) believe it or not this is google in klingon!

Type Google Easter egg in the search box and click I’m feeling lucky (http://www.google.com/Easter/feature_easter.html) Help the google easter bunny catch the easter eggs.

Type Gothengine in the search box and click I’m feeling lucky ( http://www.gothengine.com/ ) Google gothic search for goths and emos.

Others include elgoog, google santa and google loco.