Search Engines – Tips and Tricks

Search engines have been around for almost as long as the internet itself. Yet many of us still do not know how to use a search engine properly. There have been so many advances in search engine technology since the standard ‘keyword’ search from the AOL dialup days. Google, the king of the search engines has integrated many advanced features right into their search bar that can give us instant access to a lot of useful information, but many of us aren’t aware, or don’t know how to take advantage of it. Here we will cover a few  of the coolest tips and tricks you can use to pull information you need in a split second.

More Than Meets the Eye in That Little Bar

Search engines have been around for almost as long as the internet itself. Yet many of us still do not know how to use a search engine properly. There have been so many advances in search engine technology since the standard ‘keyword’ search from the AOL dialup days. Google, the king of the search engines has integrated many advanced features right into their search bar that can give us instant access to a lot of useful information, but many of us aren’t aware, or don’t know how to take advantage of it. Here we will cover a few (not all) of the coolest tips and tricks you can use to pull information you need in a split second.

Basic Search Modifiers

Before we get to the good stuff, Let’s first cover some fairly basic tricks you can do to enhance your search results. Click on any of the images below to see the results of that search:

Quotations
Quotations can be used to limit your search to specific subjects. For example, lets pretend you wanted to pull some information on a computer case. The search:

Will return pages that contain the word “computer” and the word “case”, you might see results that contain either one or the other. But that isn’t really what we are looking for.

However, adding quotations to this search:

Will return pages that contain the phrase “computer case” which will pinpoint what you are really searching for. Those quotations are essential to returning highly specified results

Cool Tricks

Google Search engine has some pretty cool features that you might not be aware of, here are a few of my favorite.

Word Definitions (define:)
Let’s say that I am reading online and I come upon a word that I don’t understand. Rather than waste my time pulling out a dictionary or navigating to webster’s online, all I have to do is type this in my search bar:

This will quickly return the definition of the word

Definitions of facetious on the Web:

Beating proxy servers and dead links. (cache:)
Have you ever tried to visit a web page and it wouldn’t pull up? Then you realized that the website was inaccessible and its server was down. Or have you ever been at work, but the proxy web server at work blocked all your favorite websites for no reason? There is a trick to pulling up google’s cache of that website. Here’s what you do if www.hardocp.com won’t pull up for you.

Pulling up Movie Information (movie:)
Here is a useful trick for movie buffs, if you need some quick information on a movie, just type the following:

This will return information and reviews on any movie you type in.

motrin
Specific Site Search (site:website.com)
This search modifier is useful for site specific searches. For example if I wanted all information on a specific computer case, the NSK2400 from silentpcreview.com, I would type the following:

paxil and methadone

Stock lookup (stocks:)
Want some quick stock quotes? just use this code, and this information will pop right up, Here is google’s stock:

Quick Calculator
The google search bar is even a calculator, give it a try:

Those are just a few of my favorite search engine tricks. I hope that if you weren’t aware of these that you will find them very useful, I use most of these daily and they make information management so much easier. Feel free to comment below on more search engine tricks.