How To Read a PDF file on Google Search Page Without Downloading

Countless times, Google displays the results to the search words as a PDF file instead of a link to a particular web page. Yes! This has its advantages. You can download the file on the local storage for offline purposes. But how many rushes PDF files that you downloaded before providing the relevant information you need.

I remember when I was writing literature for my project year-end, I had to download hundreds of PDF documents, read them offline before taking the decision to keep the most relevant or eliminate irrelevantly.

This download, the reading process and eliminating waste two precious resources: time and data. However, the good news is that there is a way you can read the PDF file you see on the results page of Google search online without downloading. Believe me, read it online does not consume your data and easily access the contents of the document and then decide to download or not.

How I can know that a result in Google is a PDF and not a web page?

Knowing this is easy! In the front of the particular result, you will see the acronym "PDF" enclosed within a square bracket. This means that the link is PDF and when clicked, the file is downloaded.

So to be able to open the document online without downloading, follow the steps below.

Opening and Reading PDF file on Google Search Result Page

• Open Google search page in your preferred browser
• After opening the page, input the word or string of words you want to search

• Instead of clicking on the PDF link in the result page, click on the green triangle turning upside down.

• Clicking on the triangle will bring out two options: Cached and Similar, and all you needed is the Cached option

• Right Click on the Cached option, and click on Open Link in New Tab. You are opening the link in New Tab because you want the PDF to open in a New Tab, and not override the search engine result page

• Click on the New Tab to see the contents inside the PDF file

That's! Now you can read the contents of the document and the decision is now in your hand to download the PDF if you think your content is relevant to your search.


Now you should be able to read the content in a PDF file on a search results page without having to download it. I know you may have a better way to do so, please do not hesitate to use the comments section to share his method with us.






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