Thursday, September 25, 2008

Google Searching hints

At work yesterday there was a Brown Bag on Google searching. I didn't attend, because I thought I was already very good at this. My co-worker did attend however, and she brought me a copy of the handout. To my surprise, even I learned a few new Google tricks. Here they are:

Calculations and Conversions
You can type in the calculation you want directly into the google search box.
Examples:
  • 5 million euros in dollars,
  • 14% of 2362,
  • half a cup in teaspoons
Flight Status
You can type in the airline followed by the flight number and hit enter to go directly to a link that will show you the flight status for that flight.
Example: United 918

Specific Site Types
When searching for a subject, you can specify that you only get a certain type of website in the results or you can exclude a specific type.
Examples:
  • To exclude educational sites while searching for "cat illnesses" type: "cat illnesses" -site:.edu
  • To only see German websites while searching for "Frankfurt Hotels" type: "Frankfurt Hotels" site:.de
To see only recent information
To restrict your search results to postings from the last 3, 6 or 12 month periods while searching for something, precede your search string with date: and a 3, 6 or 12
Examples:
  • date:3 "Dog Shows"
  • date:12 "Football"
  • date:6 "Graham crackers"

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