Google-the most popular search engine is one of the prime destination of netizens all around the world to find things in the internet. Most of us use Google for finding webpages, files, documents, music, videos and pictures. But the interesting thing is that none of the users never use the full possibilities of Google search and won’t explore the power of search. Even the experienced internet users don’t know to find the exact items with in a short time using few searches. In this contest, CEF is interested to explore further the Google search engine and it’s abilities. You may have checked the most of the tricks, but some tricks will really astonish you. We request all of our users to use and experience the techniques on Google while reading new tips, which will helps to store the tricks in your memory.
In the normal case, Google search for pages that contains all the words that you entered in the search box. But if you want to search for one term or another or an exact phase or quotes or similar terms, then things may change. Here are some of the useful tricks to find things easily on Google:
- Exact Phrase
You can search for exact phrase using quotes, the quotes forces Google to search for the exact phrase.
For example “Email Marketing” will force Google to search for Email Marketing. By adding quotes in keyword told Google to search for exact phrase and not each of the word separately. This is highly useful if you want to find some of the quotes found on somewhere easily, say in printed matter.
- Exclude the Term
Now you want to exclude a term from the search result, use – to prevent a search term show in results. I will make it more clear, say for example searching for icecream –Chocolate can help you to avoid chocolate icecreams from the results.
This will highly useful if you are searching for some particular items, you may notice the results will displays the popular items on front and the items that you are interested not displayed at the front page. The exclude term block such terms that you mentioned and thus give more opportunities to other items which will soon displayed at the front page.
- OR
You have two keywords and you need any of the results, then use OR, which returns documents with one of the given terms. You can also use | symbol (pipe symbol) instead of OR.
For example search for CCD OR CMOS will shows the result of CCD sensors or CMOS sensors. You can also use CCD | CMOS, by using this you can save keystrokes. Don’t forget to check without OR and compare the results.
- Similar Terms
Now search for similar terms, use the ~ symbol to return similar terms. Ok, how to use it ? Do a search with science ~education will result search pages with related words.
- Wildcard Search
Wildcard search is highly useful for finding something that you can’t remember the exact line or phrase. The * symbol is a wildcard. If you are not sure which keyword to be placed in the phrase, you can use the wild card to find the phrase.
For example, if you want to search for the lyrics of a movie, but don’t know the full line, so you searched for That is * I know you will find the exact lyrics. You can use this technique to find things only in some domains.
- Search in a range of numbers
Oh! sometimes you want to find things between a short period of time, like 2007..2010. Put two periods between the numbers and add a unit of measure to find some thing of the range.
For example, 5..25 lb; ; 2007..2010 are some of the queries you can check in Google. One of the main advantage is you can put your search under some constrains, like with in a price range, with in a short period of time. The search digital camera shows digital cameras available with in the price range of to
Yeh! all these search tips are good but how to remember all of them. All these are a click away in Google search. Still in doubt, go to advanced search, and you can find all these things there with enough examples. In addition to this you can narrow down search result by language,region, last update time, site or domain Search one site [like wikipedia.org or limit your results to a domain like .edu, .org or .gov], terms appearing in (in the whole page, page title, or web address, or links), file formats or types, usage rights (free to use or with a license) etc.. You can view all them from the above screenshot.
Of these tricks the file types and terms appearing (intitle) need some more explanation, as it is highly useful in our day today life.
- filetype:
Searches only filetypes that you designate, like,pdf,doc,xls,ppt,etc.. Still in doubt check the filetypes in the advanced search and do some searches with different filetypes and observe the results. Here we are going to enter the keyword in search box Google guide filetype:pdf will show the available pdf documents of Google guide. Pretty easy ! Supported file types are pdf, ps, wk1, wk2, wk3, wk4, wk5, wki, wks, wku, lwp, mw, xls, ppt, doc, wks, wps, wdb, wri, rtf, swf, ans, txt, and others like xml, cpp, java etc.are also supported.
- intitle:
Shows results with the keyword we specified only in the title. This will helps to do precise search. The usage of it is intitle:Google guide.
- Site:
You can restrict your search inside a domain. For example site:google.com shows Google indexed pages on the site.
- link:
If you want to know the list of sites or webpages that links to a page, you can use link:webpage to get the links pointing to that particular page.
- Cache:
Cache is highly useful if the site or page that you are looking for is not available at the moment. You can view the cached version of the page stored on Google servers using cache: It is also very helpful to see the outdated page if it is available in the cache. For example cache:www.google.com
Related:
Related can be use to find pages related to the mentioned page. The results are returned in the manner in which Google thinks the pages are related to the given page, so it may not be always accurate. So omitted in the video tutorial.
define:
If you need the definition of a word or phrase, just use ‘define:’ command. For example define:websearch . This is highly useful while writing something, you can virtually turns Google search engine as a dictionary, thesaurus and as a reference tool.
stocks:
To get the latest stock info enter the stock as your search term and the search engine will give you the current financials and a quick thumb-nail chart for the stock. For example stocks:goog
Flights
You can search flights using airport code. For example, NYC HKG will show the flights from New York, NY (all airports) to Hong Kong (HKG) with airlines name, time of flight with schedule.
Weather:
Get latest weather information from Google, by using ‘weather:’ command. Using it is pretty simple, weather:New York will shows the weather in New York (see the first picture in this article)
Movie:
You can search movies using ‘movie:’ command. You can also search movies by location, use movie:location
Calculator
Google can be used as a calculator. It can perform the common arithmetic operations like, + – * / ^ % etc.. Say, 5+3 or 25*24 gives the correct results in seconds, most of the time it will displayed the results instantly at the time of entering the operations in the search box. You can also find the square root of a number using sqrt(number), can also find trigonometric functions like sin(x), cos(x), tan(x) also can do the logarithmic functions like, ln(x) or log(x) ! and it can also returns n factorial, say 2!
Conversions
You can easily convert from degree to radians, hex to binary or octal or decimal etc. and vice versa. You can also convert time,temperature,speed and distance units. This is one of the best and easiest method to do the conversion. You don’t want to install a separate software to do this operation, only you need is an active internet connection.
Currency conversion
This is one of the most needed feature for frequent travelers and business persons. You can simple convert currencies from dollar to euro or any other currency that you specify. You don’t want to remember the current exchange rate or the name of the currency used in that country. A detailed example of currency conversion is added in the video tutorial mentioned below.
Video Guide about Google Tips
Coolefriend (CEF) prepared a nice video demonstrating the power of Google. Watch it in YouTube and share your comments. You can view the commands in action in this video, don’t forget to try it in real time and share your thoughts here.
On clicking the more about calculator link displayed at the bottom of the calculated result will leads to the features help page describing the use of reference tools. You can see a list of reference tools with enough examples.
Some of the useful site is listed here, you check the pages, if you want to find more/related tips on Google search. How is the tips listed in this article? Did it helpful for exploring Google? Can you share some of the tips that not mentioned here and don’t forget to see the video mentioned above and we are expecting your suggestions about the tips.
You can also view this quick video from Google,
Upadate
Google has updated the unit conversion with an interactive OneBox . If you searched for [50 pounds in kg] in Google, you will get the result in an interactive onebox and can quickly change the number of pounds or kilograms directly from the oneBox. You can also select a different unit of measurement from the list: metric ton, gram, stone, ounce. It can lets you change the conversion type and switch to a different category: speed, length, temperature, volume, area, fuel consumption, time or digital storage, (see the screenshot of 10 pounds in Kg).
At the end, we are adding an infographic (get more out of Google) which is available on the internet is added here to show some of the Google tips and tricks for those students conducting online research.
Further Reading
http://www.googleguide.com/advanced_operators_reference.html
