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Help Desk – 2006-04-17

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Google – Tips and Tricks

The odds are high that you will use Google today if you use the internet. It has become a standard utility in modern life in less than a decade. We may give it no thought because it works so well. Yet it can do much more than standard searches. I explore below some of the features that hide behind its elegantly simple surface.

Have you set the Preferences that appear to the right of the Google Search line? Clicking on it takes you to the Preferences page where you can make a variety of choices.

SafeSearch Filtering - has three levels to filter sexually explicit content from appearing in the results.
Number of Results – the default of 10 search results per page can be increased up to 100.
Results Window – allows you to open the search result you click in a new browser window and keep the original search open. I recommend you check this box so that you never lose your original search results.

When you have made your choices select the Save Preferences button. You need to set preferences on each computer you use since they are saved locally and not on Google’s servers.

Do you ever want an exact match in your results? Place the search in quotations marks. “To be or not to be” returns more specific results than – To be or not to be. Google is limited to 32 words in a standard search, and Images and Froogle searches are further limited to no more than 10 words.

Throw away your calculator. Google does math. Typing “(107+32)*1.06”, to calculate cost plus tax, will return 147.34. It also does currency conversions. When I typed “10 euro in usd” today I got the answer “10 Euro = 12.16800 U.S. dollars”.

Discard your dictionary. Google does definitions. Place the word “define” before your search and Google will list links to definitions at the top of the search results.

Google excludes a word if you place the minus (-) sign before the word. The search “george ‑washington” will exclude references to Washington but not Bush from the results.

Google has an easy shortcut for dealing with synonyms and variations of words. Use the tilde (~) before the word. Typing “~color” will give you a rainbow of results. You can put the minus sign together with synonyms to refine your search. For example, “~color –black” outputs all colors but black.

Need the weather? Type “weather Norwalk CT” to get a four day forecast.

Have a question that needs an answer? I typed “population of CT” and the first result was “Population: 3,405,565 ; 29th, 12/00”.

Google even provides us with an easy way to remember these methods and shortcuts. Navigate to http://www.google.com/help/cheatsheet.html and bookmark the page.

Happy searching.