Google Search Tips - Contd

Google Can Be Your Phone Book : Type a person’s name, city and state directly into the search box and Google will deliver phone and address listings at the top of the results. The feature works for Business listings too. Bonus tip: Google can also work as a reverse directory; if al you have is a phone number, type it in and any matches will appear in the result.

Longer Is Better, But Shorter Is Okay : Google is designed to return high quality results even for one or two word queries, so you can keep your searches short. But adding a few more words often yields better results.Example: While gathering information on applying to colleges, include the word admissions after the name of a university you are searching to get more relevant results.

Use Quotation Marks When Precision Matters: Typing “the search is over” into Google will return web pages about the rock song by Survivor- but leaving of the quotes will produce an assortment of unrelated pages.
The reason: adding quote marks around a query tells Google to look for occurrence of the exact phrase as it was typed. That makes quote marks especially helpful when searching for song lyrics, people’s names, or expressions such as “ to be or not to be” that include very common words.

Capitalization Doesn’t Matter : Save yourself time and typos: don’t bother with SHIFT key. Googling Queen Elizabeth II and queen Elizabeth ii yields the same result. So whether you enter words in uppercase or lowercase, Google treats them equally – though the queen would prefer otherwise. Bonus tip : Google ignores common words like the, and , is , of , and to when they are used in search queries without quotes. Adding them will not change or improve your results, so you can leave them off.

Forget Pluralism: Google automatically searches for all the stems of a word, so you don’t need to do separate searches for dance, dances and dancing. Just type one of the words And Google will take care of the rest, giving you the results in one list.

Get The Picture : Looking for a photo of Paris Hilton, or the Paris Hilton Hotel? Click on the “Images” link above the search box, type your query and Google will provide any photos or graphics in its database of over one billion images that match your terms, with a link to the page where they appear. Bonus Tip: image searches may lead you to helpful Web sites that you otherwise may not find in the regular search results.

Maps, Driving Directions And Satellite Views Are One Click Away : The fastest way to find your fastest way to your destination is to enter a city and state (or just the zip code) into the search box. Example : type Washington DC , and Google will provide a direct link to its own map and direction service, maps.google.com, as well as those by Yahoo and MapQuest, making it easy to compare and get a second opinion. On Google Maps, you can toggle between a standard map view and overhead Satellite imagery that pans and zooms with the drag of a mouse, and find listings for local businessman too.

Where Do You Want To Go Today : If you know the specific web site you want to visit , type its name in Google Search text box , hit enter and you will be there in a flash.

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 the database. You can browse and read the entire text of works that are not yet copyrighted; for others , you can see snippets of pages where your search terms appear and learn where to buy a full copy.

Dial GOOGL when you are on the go :Get phone numbers, directions, movie times, stock quotes, and more delivered to your cell phone. Send a text message with your query to the number 46645(GOOGL on most US phones) and the search engine will message you back with instant answers.


Google can Be your Newscaster : Google News, reachable via the “News” link above the search box or at news.google.com, provides up to minute information on politics, business, technology entertainment, health, sports and more. Type a topic of interest into the Google news Search box to find the most recent stories from more than 4500 global news sources.


Google can be your Weatherman:Type weather followed by a zip code or the name of a city and Google will give the current conditions and four day forecast at the top of the results page.


Become A Researcher: Google tends to list popular and fresh pages at the top of its 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 check out the “Cached” versions of web pages that Google collects as it crawls and downloads the Web, which are available through a blue link at the end of every search result. The cached version is an old version of the page ,and often has the contents you are seeking even if the current version of the page has been changed- say, a news site that removed the original story. Bonus Tip: the cached version also highlights your search terms in color wherever they appear on the page, an especially helpful feature when combing through long documents.


Become A Scholar : Serious searchers can tap into thousands of scientific and academic journals with Google Scholar. Enter a query into the search box at scholar.google.com to get abstracts and papers from published sources.


Take A Magic ~ Ride : The tilde character (~) in the corner of your keyboard is a handy tool in the Google Searches. Put it before a word, with no spaces between, to have Google look for pages with both that term and its synonyms. Example : A search for ~auto will also turn up web pages that use the terms cars, trucks, automobiles and more.

Pack more Results onto each page : The “Preferences” link to the right of the search box is your ticket to tweaking various settings for Google searches, including the number of results displayed per page. Increase the number of matches you see per page from the standard set of 10,20, 30 or more, to put more answers at your fingertips faster.


Translate into Other Languages : The “Language Tools” link, also found to the right of the search box on the homepage, calls up Google’s automated translation services as well as other language options. From this page, you can translate text among numerous languages (English to Spanish, French to German, Chinese to English….) or translate a web page simply by entering its address.


Get An Instant Stock Quote : 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 NASDAQ.

Get PG- Rated results : A search on a serious topic like sex education might trigger objectionable materials, so Google provides an optional Safe Search filter to keep results family friendly. Click the “Preferences” link next to the search box to view and adjust the Safe Search settings (choose from “strict”, ”moderate” or no filtering).


Peer Inside Google : Click the “more >” link above the search box to find additional Google features and products as well as further tips on how to search effectively. Check out the very handy one-page Google Search guide at google.com/help/cheatsheet.html. Bonus tip: see what the future of Google innovation holds – including TV search, personalized search, a real time taxicab locator, and more – at Google Labs. Just type “Google Labs” into the Google search text box. Goooooooooooooood luck!