Some Useful Google Searching Tricks

Find some useful Google Searching tips:

Search using tilde symbol:

Google search box allows you to search a phrase to obtain relevant results. An example would be "Las Vegas hotels". Let's say though that you are on a budget. Well you could add the word "affordable" to the search but Google may have better choices with another word such as "budget" or "cheap". Rather than to enter all the possibilities, take advantage of the "~" symbol located on your keyboard. This is called the tilde symbol and instructs Google to search for similar words and to expand the search results. To see it in use in this case, enter "Las Vegas hotels"~affordable.

Search using minus sign:

Google also allows you to exclude search results by adding the minus sign. Using the same example above, let's say that you want to exclude affordable hotels (you're in Vegas to spend mega bucks!), just enter "Las Vegas hotels"-affordable.

Search using number ranges:

You're looking to buy a laptop online but you have a budget. Search using number ranges. For example, enter "laptop"$500...$999. This will narrow the selection to your budget!

Search a particular site:

Oftentimes I find myself on a website that has its own search box but that website probably doesn't have a search capability as sophisticated as Google. Google has its own proprietary algorithms that produce the most relevant results to the users. However, we can still use Google to search that website. Let's say that the website is azcentral.com and we want to search things to do this weekend. We can enter in the Google search: "things to do"site:azcentral.

Search for a typical file type:

This is a cool trick that very few people know about but could be very useful. I find myself looking for a template online that I can use for my business. Let's say that I want to track my business expenses. Surely there must be a nice template out there that I can use? And there is, just enter for example, "business expense spreadsheet"filetype:xls. This will find an excel spreadsheet that I can use right away.

Search your desktop:

Google can also search the entire contents of your computer using the free Google Desktop utility (desktop.google.com)

Gmail features that you may not use but might want to:

Google e-mail is probably one of the better e-mail services as it operates on a "cloud" which means that it's a one stop shop for all of your information. It provides instant messaging, text messaging and video chat in addition to your e-mail. You can even consolidate multiple e-mail accounts into one Gmail account.

Some people argue that you do not need folders anymore to organize your data. Use the "labels" feature which attached keywords to your e-mail. The neat thing is that you can use multiple keywords. Let's say that an e-mail relates to your real estate business and it is known to you as Property #1. Then associate the label "real estate" and "property 1" to the e-mail. In the future when you search for this e-mail, you can use either label. The "real estate" label will probably bring up all of your properties whereas the "property 1" label will bring up all the e-mails relating to that one property.

Filters apply rules as e-mails come in such as all e-mails from your broker will have the "real estate" label attached to it.

Adding relevant keywords can be really useful for organizing your e-mails by taking advantage of the search feature which I'm sure you'll agree is more versatile than the folders feature of most e-mail applications.

Try these cool features of Google and see how they can make your work and life more manageable. Google has a lot of other applications not covered here including Google Reader, Google Calendar, Google Docs, and more.