Google Search Tips and Tricks

By Matt - 2008-01-28 - Viewed 1073 times. Find more articles like this in our Accessible and Accessibility category.

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The Google search engine has more functions and uses than just everyday searches.

There are many neat tricks that can be pulled out of a hat when it comes to what you can ask google to do.

Before we list the tips there is one thing you should do to ensure you you are seeing the latest version of websites. If your browser is not configured properly you will find the page you are viewing is not the latest version and you are not seeing updates to the page etc. This means that if a web page has been updated since your last visit you may still be seeing the old web page version.

Here are the steps to set Internet explorer to always show the latest version of a page.

Go to - Tools - Internet options - Settings button - Select "Every visit to the page" - OK button - Ok button on next box. Done, you will now see the latest version of a page.

Google Search Tips

The following is a comprehensive guide to most of the commands you can enter in the google search box, it will get you what you want easy and fast once you have learned how to use it in a more intimate manner.

What time is it - By typing "what time is it" in the google search bar followed by a city name, you will get the live hour of your chosen city. For example if you want to know what time it is in New York you would type (what time is it new york). This always works and will save you some time if you are looking to know the hour at a foreign city.

Flight Departures and Arrivals - By typing an airline's name along with a flight number google will give you the time of departure and the time of arrival. An example would be typing (delta flight 323) which would give the result of it's active flying time.

Use Quotation marks to find exactly what you want - When you surround your phrase with quotation marks Google will only return results exactly matching the entire phrase, ie "hairless cats".

Finding addresses from phone numbers - currently only works for US phone numbers. So you have a phone number for a person or business but need to know the address? Simply type the phone number into the seach bar or search box on Googles home page and Google will return the address listed for that number.

Calculator - Enter the calculation you'd like done into the Google search box and hit the Enter key.

Street Maps - Enter a U.S. street address, including zip code or city/ state in the Google search box. Sometimes just the street address and city name will be enough.

Definitions - To find a definition for a word or phrase type the word "define," then a space, and then the word(s) you want defined.

Converter - Google can be a powerful converter, from how many seconds are in a year or how many teaspoons in a quarter cup to the very useful exchange worth between different currency's. Here are a few examples of the commands you must type in to do so. (quarter cup in teaspoons) - (seconds in a year) - (20 usd in euro).

Little Tricks - If ever you are using a certain software on your computer that is necessary while at the same time being dangerous for your computer, or maybe the software slows down your system a tad too much. There is a new trick on google for finding alternatives for anything. Simply type (better than) followed by anything and you will in most cases find a better alternative. For example typing "better than kazaa" will ultimately lead you to all other downloading softwares of the same type. Something similar can be done concerning music artists, if you type (reminds me of) followed by an artist, you will get results of music that are similar to that artist's music. An example would be (reminds me of metallica), which would then give results of bands and artists who's music is similar to that of metallica's. This is a good way to finding artists that you did not know about.

Removing Affiliate links from product searches - When you're sick of seeing duplicate product search results from the likes of eBay, Bizrate, Pricerunner, and Shopping.com, clear 'em out by stacking up the -site:ebay.com -site:bizrate.com -site:shopping.com operator.

Find related terms and documents - Simply adding a tilde (~) to a search term will return related results. For example (~car) will bring up results of driving and car manufacturers, along with many related topics.

Free music for everyone - -inurl:(htm|html|php) intitle:"index of" +"last modified" +"parent directory" +description +size +(wma|mp3) "metallica". Simply paste the preceeding command line into the google search box and replace ("metallica") by the band or artist of your choice. You will the find a link that will give you all of their songs and mp3's that you can download for free.

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