I am sure most of you here all know what Google is. If you don’t I am not sure what planet you have been living on for the last 10 years. Google’s search engine can be used to find all your favorite websites and it can be very useful finding things you want to learn more about or get more information about. Below are a list of 15 awesome tricks you can do with the Google search to get the answers and information you want!
1. Google Calculator
How this works is your type an equation into the search field and it will give you the result. Example: 2*4 – 23*5 + 1000. After you type this in and click search or enter it will give you the result. You can do addition (+), subtraction (-), multiplication (*), division (/), to the power of (^), and square root of a number (sqrt).
2. Dictionary Definitions
You can get the definition of a word by typing “define:” followed by the word. Example: define: canucks. This will get you the definition of canucks.
3. Search for a specific title
Suppose you came across a website you thought was awesome but you forgot to bookmark the site and only remembered the title of it and wanted to find it again. Well you can search by title with Google to hopefully find that website a bit more easily. All you need to do is type “intitle: then the title”. By doing this you will only get results of websites with that line in the title.
4. Google Converter
This is a very useful one if you need to convert something from one unit to another unit quickly. All you need to do is type something like “5km in miles” and it will do the conversion for you. I also use it a lot for changing from Fahrenheit to Celsius (25F to C).
5. Compare Currencies
Google search engine has a built in currency converter so you can go from one currency to another. This is done by simply typing something like “1 USD in CAN” and press enter and it will do the conversion for you.
6. Weather Updates
If you want to know what the weather will be like in your area you can type something like “London weather” and it will give you the conditions in that area.
7. Search for specific file types
If you want to find a certain type of file on the Internet it is normally pretty difficult to find what you are looking for but with the use of Google search you can find file types a bit more easily. You can search for file types by doing something like “Guide to build a good website filetype:ppt”. That will look for files with that name and the file type of a powerpoint presentation.
8. Search on a particular website
If you want to search a particular website from Google you can do this by typing “hitch DVD site:www.amazon.com”. By typing in site: and then the website it will search that website for what you have type before site:.
9. Get the local time anywhere
Want to know the time in London now? You can do that by typing “what time is it London” in the search bar. You can also do it by typing “time (location)” without the quotes.
10. Remove unwanted search results
Have you ever wanted to search for something in particular but wanted to remove some of the search results? You can do this by type -something after the search term to remove it from the search results. Example: James Bond -movie. What that would do is remove the search results of James Bond that included the movie so you would find other things like news, books, etc.
11. Search for URLs
Want to search for a particular URL? You can do so by putting a “_, . , -” in between the words instead of a space. Example: What_are_you_talking_about. This would search for URLs that included those words.
12. Track Flight Status
Want to track a particular flight status? You can do that if you know the airline and flight number. You just need to type in the airline and the flight number to get the status. Example: British airways flight 5. This will bring you the results of this flight from this particular airline.
13. Search Google Groups by the subject line
You can search Google groups by subject line with this little trick. Type “insubject:then topic here” and you will get the Google groups with that subject line.
14. Find Related Sites
This trick will probably be familiar to a bunch of people but is helpful for finding related sites. What you do is type “related:www.site.com”. So if you wanted to find an alternative to the website your are looking at that you may have liked you can use this feature.
15. Find Links to a specific URL
This is pretty helpful for finding backlinks to your website. If you want to find out what websites link to your website you can type “link:www.yoursite.com” and you will get all the results of the websites that link back to yours.
In Summary:
Below is a summary of 15 awesome tricks you can use Google search engine for:
- Google Calculator
- Dictionary Definitions
- Search for a specific title
- Google Converter
- Compare Currencies
- Weather Updates
- Search for specific file types
- Search on a particular website
- Get the local time anywhere
- Remove unwanted search results
- Search for URLs
- Track Flight Status
- Search Google Groups by the subject line
- Find related sites
- Find Links to a specific URL
You could do a post on each one of these excellent features. Thanks so much. Is there a one page easy reference guide around? Ah, sounds like a good product.
Thanks for posting this on Twitter.
Your welcome for the post. I am sure I could write little posts on each of these features but I thought it may be more useful in one big post. I am not sure if there is an easy reference guide around. I will try and write more about Google tricks later.
Thanks for the comment.
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Great post and thanks for sharing.
google experiments has heaps more features that will enable you to do more stuff. Here’s what I have known and I hope to see you post more information about this, this is awesome discussion.
Google search offer several mroe, for example
to check whether cached or not yet
cache:yourwebsite.com
then, you can see the cached website if google has mirrored.
try google experimental search,it includes
timeline, map, additional insight info, etc etc
And one big one for programmer, google code search
I will quote from google below.
regexp Search for a regular expression
go{2}gle hello,\ world ^int printk
“exact string” Search for exact string
“compiler happy”
class:regexp function:regexp Search only in class and function names New!
class:BTree function:laugh
class:hash.*multimap function:.*range
license:regexp Search only for files with licenses matching regexp.
license:bsd int\ printf -license:gpl heapsort
Thanks for the tips Linn. I know the post doesn’t include all the great features Google has to offer but if it did I would write pages and pages of information that not everyone would want to go through.
I plan on doing another post in the future about some more of the Google features.
Nice post here.
Thanks for the comment Sunil!
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