At a glance!

I’ve got a quick tip that builds on my earlier post that covered better Google searches.

This week, I’ll show you how to combine a few of those techniques into a single query that allows you to search through images from three stock image sites all at once.

(Need a refresher on last week’s email? Click here to jump over to 7 Google search tips that will improve your results)

1 // A quick reminder

Previously, we covered 7 tips for better Google searches.

Here, we’ll use the technique for searching within a specific website using site: combined with a new technique using OR.

This will allow us to search across multiple sites simultaneously.

2 // One powerful query

I’ll start by showing you the base query, then I’ll break it down, and finally I’ll provide some examples.

Here’s the base query:

• (site:sample_site_1 OR site:sample_site_2) [query]

If that looks like a mess, don’t worry. It’s very straightforward! Here’s a quick breakdown

Breaking down the query

1. site:sample_site_1
   This is the same query from last week that allows us to search within a specific website. In this case, you’d replace sample_site_1 with the domain of whichever site you wanted to search.
2. OR
   This is a new technique. OR allows us to tell Google to perform multiple searches at once.
3. ( )
   I like to wrap the OR statements in parentheses. This is my personal preference, and I think it makes the query easier to read.
4. [query]
   This is the spot where you’d insert the term you’re searching for.

3 // Combining it all

Now that we’ve broken down the query, let’s see it in action:

• (site:unsplash.com OR site:pixabay.com OR site:pexels.com) wedding dresses

In this case, you can see that I’ve got three site: statements. You can theoretically add as many sites as you’d like to this!

Then, at the end, you can see I’m searching those sites for wedding dresses.

Finally, I ran the search on Google Images.

Here’s what my results looked like:

As you can see, the results aggregated across Unsplash, Pixabay, and Pexels.

Tip! Download directly from the sites, not from Google Images

If you use this method, I recommend clicking through to the actual sites instead of saving the photos from Google Images itself.

I can’t say 100% for sure, but gut tells me that this is the best way to avoid any sort of copyright issues.

In any case, clicking through only costs a couple seconds of time, and it’s worth it for that extra layer of reassurance.

Keep reading

If you want to check out the other Google search tips I’ve covered, check out my previous post:

7 Google search tips that will improve your results

Others? Questions?

Have any other favorites? Questions about how to use this?

Send a reply to this email and let me know!