Over the course of using Google for the past ten years, I’ve found several tips and tricks to using the search engine. This post covers the ones that I’ve found most useful.
Limit your search to one site
Have you ever tried to find something that you know must exist on a particular site? This happens to me when I’m looking for info on Microsoft’s site. So, I’ll often enter a search term into Google and then add “site:microsoft.com” . Google will then only return hits that are on the *.microsoft.com site.
Find sites that have links to your site
Do you have your own website/blog and want to know if any other websites have links to your site? Just enter “link:mydomain.com” into Google and it will return pages that have links to your site.
Measurement conversions
Ever needed to know how many feet are in 6 miles? Ask Google – enter “convert 6 miles to feet” and see what the results are (or click the link). Go ahead, I’ll wait.
Pretty cool, eh? It also works if you need to convert from English to metric (mile to kilometers, etc).
Google Calculator
Google also does math calculations. When you enter 1+1 you’ll get the answer “2” along with an option to search for 1 + 1.
