What else can Google do?
Nary a week goes by that I don’t find a new Google trick to make my life easier. So many that I began bookmarking numerous sites that have sprung up singing it’s praises and deciphering esoteric little features heretofore unhyped. I will list several such sites near the end of this post but I wanted to take a few characters to point out some of my favorite tips.
To search for exact phrases, place quotation marks around the text string, e.g. “Illinois Weslseyan”
To include synonyms use a ~ (without a space) before the term e.g. Google ~tips
Notice that your Google results highlight not only Google tips, but also Google Tutorial, Google Secrets, Google Help, Google Guide, Google Advice, etc.
Another helpful tool hidden within Google Labs called Google Sets will help predict terms from a list of similar terms. You type in Moe, Larry and Curly and Google Sets expand the list to Curly Joe, Shemp and several items that may not even make sense to you. Of course, you could have looked up the Three Stooges in Wikipedia and arrived at the same place. Try it out a few times and let me know what you think.
If you’re looking specifically for a PDF file use the advanced search feature and designate PDF as the file format. You can use the language tools to specify searches on pages written in other language and Google will translate the page for you (more or less.)
In the coming weeks we will dissect the Google results page and show you how customize the results and add features to make it easier to organize and annotate to information that you find.
For revised and extended discussions of all the search options and features, peruse the following sites:
Google Tutors Google Search Manual and Google Guide
Tags: , advanced search, search operators