How can I get better at using Google search?

Michael struggles to find the search results he's looking for, and would like some tips for better Googling

Last week's column mentioned search skills. I'm sometimes on the third page of results before I get to what I was really looking for. I'm sure a few simple tips would find these results on page 1. All advice welcome. Michael

Google achieved its amazing popularity by de-skilling search. Suddenly, people who were not very good at searching - which is almost everyone - could get good results without entering long, complex searches. Partly this was because Google knew which pages were most important, based on its PageRank algorithm, and it knew which pages were most effective, because users quickly bounced back from websites that didn't deliver what they wanted.