Google: Bells and Whistles

Gmail
Scholar
Web
Images
Groups
Finance
Products
Maps
News
Checkout
Video (aka  YouTube)
Documents
iGoogle
Blog Search
Blogger (eBlogger)
Calendar
Reader
Orkut
Labs
Photos (Picasa)
Patents
These are the more common Google Products (http://scholar.google.com/intl/en/options/ for a full listing)

Advanced Searching (Web)

  1. Allows for limiting by language, region, file format, date, numeric range, occurrences, usage rights, and safe search.
  2. Page specific search (pages similar to or pages that link to)
  3. Topic-specific (US Gov’t, Universities, Microsoft, etc.)

Find Results provides an easier way to structure searches (all words, exact pharase, at least one of the words, without words)

Can change the number of results displayed per page

General Searching Tips

Sometimes the best way to ask a question is to get Google to 'fill in the blank' for you. You can do this by adding an asterisk "*" in the part of the sentence or question that you want filled in. The asterisk can’t be used as a partial word truncation. More than one can be used at a time.

You can use Google to search only within one specific website by entering the search terms you're looking for, followed by the word "site" and a colon followed by the domain name.

The numrange operator searches for results containing numbers in a given range. You can use Numrange to set ranges for everything from dates ( Willie Mays 1950..1960) to weights ( 5000..10000 kg truck). Just add two numbers, separated by two periods, with no spaces, into the search box along with your search terms, and specify a unit of measurement or some other indicator of what the number range represents.

If you want to search not only for your search term but also for its synonyms, place the tilde sign ("~") immediately in front of your search term.
To find pages that include either of two search terms, add an uppercase OR between the terms.

If a common word is essential to getting the results you want, you can include it by putting a "+" sign in front of it. (Be sure to include a space before the "+" sign.)

http://www.google.com/support/
               
The following table summarizes how Google interprets your query.
From http://www.googleguide.com/
 


Search Behaviors

Descriptions

Implicit AND

Google returns pages that match all your search terms. Because you don't need to include the logical operator AND between your terms, this notation is called an implicit AND.

Exact Matching

Google returns pages that match your search terms exactly.

Word Variation
Automatic Stemming

Google returns pages that match variants of your search terms.

Common-Word Exclusion

Google ignores some common words called “stop words,” e.g., the, on, where, and how. Stop words tend to slow down searches without improving results.

32-Word Limit

Google limits queries to 32 words.

Term Proximity

Google gives more priority to pages that have search terms near each other.

Term Order

Google gives more priority to pages that have search termsin the same order as the query.

Case Insensitivity

Google is case-insensitive; it shows both upper- and lowercase results.

Ignoring Punctuation

Google ignores most punctuation and special characters including , . ; ? [ ] ( ) @ / * < >

 

Odds and Ends

  1. Use as a calculator - type formula into the search box.
  2. Define: word
  3. airport code airport
  4. airline flight number
  5. weather city, state
  6. Currency conversion – need to know the abbreviations
  7. There is a 32 word limit for searching, wildcards can get around the limit
  8. Cached can serve the place of  a missing page (404 error), similar to waybackmachine.org
  9. Has built in dictionary
  10. Google favors results that have your search terms near each other
  11. http://www.google.com/intl/en/help/features.html
  12. inurl: [word]  will look for the word in URLs
  13. intitle: [word] will look for the word in the title of the page
  14. filetype: [extension] will look for file extensions

For searches within certain topics, you'll notice links at the top of the search results page that help you quickly narrow your search.

Non Google Pages that work better for some things

http://clusty.com/ works nice if you want to cluster results
http://acronymfinder.com better for finding acronyms, now has zip codes as well
http://www.googleguide.com/  nice non-Google Guide
http://soople.com/  page aggregates the more common Google resources

Caveat for work posted on Google:

                11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive licence to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. This licence is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services and may be revoked for certain Services as defined in the Additional Terms of those Services. From the Google page

Leslie M. Behm (c) 2007