1. Google Can Be Your Phone Book:
Type in a person’s name and address and Google will display their phone number. This works for businesses too. Plus you can use this in reverse order by typing in the phone number.
2. Google Can Be Your Calculator:
Enter a math problem into the search bar and Google will solve it.
Example: (2+2) or spell it out (two plus two)
3. Use Longer Keywords For Specific Results:
Google is designed to return high quality results for one or two word search queries, but will also yield better results of longer keyword phrases.
Example: instead of “best restaurant” try “best restaurant in Philadelphia, PA”
4. Use Quotation Marks When Precision Matters:
Typing just any phrase into Google’s search will yield results with the words in any order. For more specificity type your search using quotation marks (” “). This returns only results containing the exact phrase you typed in.
Example: new Nike sneakers —> “new Nike sneakers”
5. Google Can Be Your Dictionary:
Type “define” followed by any word into the search box and Google will return a definition at the top of the page.
Example: “define esoteric”
6. Don’t Bother With Capitalization:
You can type in your search queries for proper names without capitalizing the word. Google will still return the most relevant results you were searching for.
Example: President Obama —> president obama
7. Forget Pluralism:
Google automatically searches for all the stems of a word. Don’t bother separating your searches.
Example: chance, chances
8. Find A Picture:
Click the “images” link at the top left of the Google home page and type in your image search. Google will return comprehensive results in seconds accessing their database of over one billion images.
9. Maps, Driving Directions And Satellite Views Are One Click Away
Type in a city and state or zip code into the search box and Google will return a link to it’s own map and direction service (maps.google.com) and also provide results from MapQuest.com and Yahoo. In Google Maps you can toggle between a standard map view and overhead satellite imagery that pans and zooms with the drag of a mouse.
10. Easy Access To Websites:
Just type in the website you want to go to in the search box and Google will provide you with a quick link to the site.
11. Browse The World’s Bookshelves Online:
Search for a topic at print.google.com and you will see information from actual books that Google has scanned and indexed in it’s own database. You are able to browse or read the entire text of works that are not copyrighted. For others, you can see snippet of the page where your search term appears and learn where to buy a full copy.
12. Dial GOOGL When You’re On The Go:
For movie times, stock quotes, directions, phone numbers and more you can have this information delivered straight to your cell phone by sending a text message to GOOGL (46645) and Google will send you an instant message with the answer.
13. Are You Feeling Lucky?:
Enter a search term and click this button on the Google homepage to bypass a long list of results and go directly to the top matching website for your term.
14. Google Can Be Your Newscaster:
Google provides up to date information on business, politics, entertainment, technology, health, sports and much more. Go to “news” link at the top left of Google’s homepage and enter your search term. To follow a topic closely sign up at www.google.com/alerts for regular alerts that are mailed to you with most up-to-date news and website links.
15. Get Your Weather:
Type “weather” followed by your zip code or name of the city and Google will return the current conditions and a four day forecast at the top of the results page.
16. Become A Researcher:
Google tends to list popular and ‘fresh’ content at the top of it’s results, but dig beyond the first page or two of search results and you will often find older, forgotten pages that have just what you need for a research project. Also you can check out the “cached” versions of web pages that Google collects as it crawls and downloads the internet, which are available through a blue link at the end of every search result. The cached version of the page is often older, but may contain just what you are looking for.
17. Take A Magic ~ Ride:
Place the tilda (~) character in front of your search term, with no space between, and Google will look for pages with both that term and it’s synonyms.
Example: car —> ~car | Google will return cars, trucks, automobiles, etc.
18. More Results On Each Page:
You can change the amount of search results per page by going to the “settings” link in the top right hand corner of Google’s home page and click search setting.
19. Translate Into Other Languages:
Click on the “Language Tools” link to the right of the search box to change your language preferences.
20. Instant Stock Quotes:
Type a stock ticker symbol into the search box to get a stock quote and chart on any public company listed on the New York Stock Exchange, American Stock Exchange or the NASDAQ.
21. Get PG-Rated Results:
Click the “search settings” link on the top right of the Google homepage to adjust your safe search settings. You can choose from strict, moderate or no filtering. This is especially helpful if you have young kids or teenagers doing searches.
22. See What Else Google Offers:
Click the “more” link at the top left of the Google homepage to discover the comprehensive list of different services offered by Google. To find out more about what Google has planned for the future type in “Google Labs” into the search box.
Hopefully this helped. Have fun!
Resource: The Google Story
Sincerely,
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