We all use google, and most of us that would consider ourselves “power users” probabaly already know the more popular google ‘shortcuts’ and features. Like you can use google as a calculator and search “8 + 8” and google will spit back “16”. You can search “100 inches in feet” and google will say “8.3333333 feet”. Google is pretty smart isn’t it? I wrote this guide of advanced google search tips to teach you how to save lots of time and be more productive!
Google Search Shortcuts You should know – but probably don’t
Google Package Tracking
You probably didn’t know though, that you can type in a package tracking number for UPS, Fedex, or United States Postal Service and google will automatically perform the query and the right web site, and give you results on where your package is!! What a time saver – who knew google would track packages? (sorry can’t give an example for this one – I don’t have a package to track!)
Google Vehicle Search
Did you know that you can also type any VIN number in google for any vehicle – and it will give you a carfax vehicle record? Click on the pictured example to try this search example now!
Searching by Price Range Using Google
You can search using a range of numbers. This is a totally brand new one for me…say you want to buy something and you’re willing to play between like amount or another. Like a hard drive, and you want prices between $50 and $100. Your google search would be like this: “seagate 100GB hard drive #$50…$100#”. Just be sure to start and end your range with the # sign and have the 3 dots in the middle. This really helps to get good results on exactly what you are looking for, and in your price range! Click on the picture example below to see this search in action…
Quickly find and search books Using Google
If you looking to buy a book, or find a book – just preface what you’re looking for in your search with the word “book”. For example, search for ‘book unix shell scripting’. Click the pictured example below to see what this looks like. Note I circled in red the options for “Limited Preview” and “Full View”. One is of course looking at part of a book, and full view is when the entire book is available online (for free). For this particular search, there are none available as full view (for free), but it’s good to know that some are. Click the pictured example to see a basic search for a book.
Now click on the first book result. This is really cool – you can see inside the book, the table of contents, a bunch of sample pages…notice my red circle in the bottom right corner where you can “search this book”. Awesome. Just above that you’ll see a list of places you can buy this book. Click the pictured example to see this book search.
The one last thing I wanted to show you (and possibly the coolest), is the link right above the “search this book” box that says “Find this book in a Library”. When you click on that, it figures out your physical location by the IP address on your computer, and finds the closest libraries listed online that may have to book. You can’t beat that. Click the pictured example to see this work live.
How to Use Google as a Phone Book
I use google to look up numbers all the time, and it’s pretty good at it. But I’ve learned that it can be even better. You can use google as a phone book, simply by prefacing your search with either ‘phonebook’, ‘rphonebook’ (residential), or ‘bphonebook’ (business). Click the pictured example below to see this in action!
How to use Google Movie Search
Like other special searches you can do with google – you can also search movies and movie reviews! This is where googles no-nosense clean style comes in handy. I used to look at movie reviews in Yahoo! Movies. But that page is just plagued by ads, garbage, and clutter. Google comes to the rescue again, and all you have do is preface your search with “movie:”. Click on the pictured example below to see this work live…
This is awesome! You get the movies under that name, the year they were made……but wait! There’s more! Click on the title of any movie and you get this example where you can see reviews, the avg review rating, you get frequently mentioned terms (to search by), you can search within the reviews, and you can find theatres by you by zip code! Click the pictured example to view this search now…
Get Historical News with Google News Archive Search
Google News is great for the latest headlines, but what I didn’t know is that google news has an archive you can search…and they have archived news that goes back decades and decades. And once you do a search you can arrange the results in a timeline. This could be very helpful if you’re doing research on just about any topic. Click the pictured example to do this this search…
Look at Dead Tree Catalogs the google web 2.0 way
Google is so big now, there’s just so many things I didn’t know you can do with them now (and I’ve been using google since 1998 – almost 10 years). This is something I simply didn’t know existed. Google has a catalog search, meaning “mail order catalog”. I kinda miss getting catalogs back in the day (some I still get), like Edmund Scientific, and do it yourself electronics catalogs. Google Catalog Search is in “beta”, so your favorite ones might not be available in there yet (but many are). This search is really cool, because they scan the entire catalog in, and you can browse the pages (quickly) as if the catalog were in your hands. You can even browse up to 6 pages at once, and search within a catalog. Click the image below to try the Sharper Image catalog search (6 pages at once)…
Use Google Notebook to organize clips and make notes
This is the last in the series of tips (and perhaps the best). Google has created an extension for the Firefox Web Browser called Notebook that you can download here. This is the firefox extension I’ve been looking for!! I’ve used a few of these clipboard like utilities before, and also ones that were firefox extensions – like ClipMarks. I didn’t like that at all. Notebook (like most google tools) is easy to use, and does exactly what I want. Basically, once installed – you can select text (or pictures), click ‘clip’ and what you selected is saved to your ‘notebook’. But (a feature I always wanted), you can manually add notes and ‘sections’ (categories) as well. I fired it up and added one ‘clip’ (see pic below)…
I was wary about this plugin at first, but then I clicked the “tools” dropdown (from the pic above), and you can click “go to my notebooks homepage”. This is a new part of your ‘google account’. Your google notebook page is where you store you clips, you can setup ‘sections’ to categorize them, and drag and drop arrange them, you make make new notes, you get a rich text editor, you can search your notebooks, you can “share” your notebook with other collaborators, you can share it as a public web page, but most importantly you can “export to google docs”. Woohoo!! This is a major, major time saver for me! Now as I read online and do research I can save all kinds of things for parsing later as I go without the need to have a text editor open. Everything is saved in my google account, and I can walk away and access it from any computer in the world. Out of all the things I learned about google today – THIS was the BEST ONE (for me)!!
How does Google Help You?
In this google tutorial article I keyed in on things I noticed that I never knew about before, things that directly benefited me the most in the ways I work on the web. What didn’t I list that you have learned and can share with me and others? To make this article even better, I would love for you to submit your feedback using the comment links below! If you would like to suggest a new article or guest post – please feel free to use out contact form.
I would also like to tell you about how I came across this information – as it may help you as well. I got all of these golden nuggets of information in a book, brand new for 2007 called The Google Power Tools Bible. This is definitely a very thorough reference of 32+ chapters and over 600+ pages. It covers all kinds of things that I didn’t have time to go into here, like google trends, google desktop, google office, froogle, and tons more! It’s definitely worth the money!
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