4 Cool and Useful Google Search Tips

09 Dec 2014 4 Comments

by Jeri Usbay in Google Tags: , , ,

atari breakout

Here are 4 maneuvers you can use on Google that you may be unaware of.  The first 2 require you to have a Google account.  If you use Gmail for your email, you already have a Google account.  If you don’t have an account it is quite painless.  Go to accounts.google.com/signup.  It is quick and easy.

1. MY PURCHASES –  If you’ve been ordering items online and using your Gmail address when ordering, type the following into Google search:  my purchases.   You have to be signed into your Gmail for this to work.  All your purchase confirmations, shipping, and delivery notices will appear.  If you click on an order, an itemized list with cost and total spent for that order is displayed.  You can also then click to go to the actual email. Very handy at holiday time to track your shopping list and manage your budget!

2.  ALERTS –  You will also need a Google Gmail account for this one. You can set up a Google Alert to receive emails with links to recent Internet content about any topic of your choosing.  You can set up one for your name for instance to see if there is anything posted about you on the Internet.  You can set up an alert for anything you search and want to be updated about –  a school, or car, or company, or product, or medical information, etc. This is also painless to set up, go to google.com/alerts.  You have a choice of settings including how often you want to receive the alert.  Once it is set up you can later delete the alert or modify its settings. You can set up multiple alerts.

Google Alert

3.  FLIGHT INFO –  Wondering if your flight is on time? From search just type flight, then the name of the airline and flight number.  For example:  flight southwest 157 .

4. ATARI BREAKOUT –  I saved Atari Breakout for last, because after trying this, you will forget to come back to this post. Search for Atari Breakout, then click on the Images link.  Welcome back to the 70’s.  Have fun (see you in about half an hour)!

If you have returned, welcome back!  Let me know what you think if you’ve tried any of these tips or if you have a favorite of your own to share.

Are You a Good Googler?

22 Oct 2012 6 Comments

by Jeri Usbay in Using Technology Tags: ,

Most people I ask think they do ok using Google or Bing search engines, they find what they need pretty quickly.  Search engines have become quite smart and sophisticated making our search efforts almost effortless.  Yet there are times when we need to search a little smarter to find what we are looking for.  I recently completed Google’s free online Power Searching course and learned a few tricks worth sharing.

My favorite tip is searching using a date range.  Once you have your search results you can narrow your results by timeframe.  Click on Search Tools just above your search results.  You can limit results to the past hour, 24 hours, week, month, year, or enter your own date criteria.  This is so helpful when you are looking for current reviews or research, or you are looking for older documents.

Only use quotes around words if you want results that contain the phrase that you’ve put  in quotes.  For instance if you search for  “street signs in Montreal”  vs. street signs in Montreal,  varying results will be returned.

Suppose your search contains too many results and you’d like to filter out results that are not what you are looking for.   Simply add  a minus sign before the word you don’t want.  For instance if you are looking for results for the name Anna Maria but don’t want results about Anna Maria Island or Anna Maria College, search this:  anna maria -island -college.  By the way capitalization is ignored in your search.  However as you probably know word order does matter.  If you search Maria Anna your results will differ from searching Anna Maria.

Are you looking for information on a subject (solar energy)  from a particular website (nytimes.com) or type of website (edu or gov)?  Use site:name of site.  For instance,  solar energy site:edu  or solar energy site:gov  or solar energy site:nytimes.com.

If you can’t remember these search rules, you can  click on Advanced Search which allows you to fill out a search criteria form.  You can find Advanced Search if you click on the tool gear from the top right of your search results, or way on the bottom of your search results page.

Here are a few handy dandy searches you can try:

Weather with city or zip code will provide you with the current forecast and weather for the next few days ahead  (weather  11743).

Time with city or zip code will provide the current time at that location (time london).

Flight with airline and flight number provides departure and arrival information (flight southwest  157).

You can convert quantities by using in:  30C in F will convert Celsius to Fahrenheit.   Other conversions work as well; meters to miles, cups to quarts, etc.  You can also put calculations into the Google search bar.

For additional search shortcuts, you can check out Google’s tips and tricks page.

If you’ve managed to read this far (thanks for sticking with me on this one), you may also be interested in this Google video  about how Google search actually works.

Happy searching and may you always find what you seek!

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