When it comes to the Google search box, you already know the tricks: finding exact phrases matches using quotes like "so say we all" or searching a single site using site:lifehacker.com gmail. But there are many more oblique, clever, and lesser-known search recipes and operators that work from that unassuming little input box. Dozens of Google search guides detail the tips you already know, but today we're skipping the obvious and highlighting our favorite obscure Google web search tricks.
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Lifehacker - Top 10 Obscure Google Search Tricks - Feature
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Number 3 is awesome.
Highlighted by zachharkey
... there are many more oblique, clever, and lesser-known search recipes and operators that work from that unassuming little input box. Dozens of Google search guides detail the tips you already know, but today we're skipping the obvious and highlighting our favorite obscure Google web search tricks.
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-inurl:(htm|html|php) intitle:"index of" +"last modified" +"parent directory" +description +size +(wma|mp3) "Nirvana"
Highlighted by shaleslie
... there are many more oblique, clever, and lesser-known search recipes and operators that work from that unassuming little input box. Dozens of Google search guides detail the tips you already know, but today we're skipping the obvious and highlighting our favorite obscure Google web search tricks.
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Number 3 is awesome.
Highlighted by zachharkey
Top 10 Obscure Google Search Tricks
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Top 10 Obscure Google Search Tricks
Highlighted by ibancorp
Dozens of Google search guides detail the tips you already know, but today we're skipping the obvious and highlighting our favorite obscure Google web search tricks.
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What time is it in Bangkok right now? Ask Google. Enter simply
what time is it to get the local time in big cities around the world
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Enter the airline and flight number into the Google search box and get back the arrival and departure times right inside Google's search results.
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Google's powerful built-in converter calculator can help you out whether you're cooking dinner, traveling abroad, or building a PC. Find out how many teaspoons are in a quarter cup (quarter cup in teaspoons) or how many seconds there are in a year (seconds in a year) or how many euros there are to five dollars (5 USD in Euro).
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Reader Adam taps the wisdom of the crowds by searching for like items using key phrases. He writes in:
Simply search for, in quotes: "better than _keyword_"Some example results:
Results 1 - 100 of about 550 English pages for " better than WinAmp".
Results 1 - 57 of 57 English pages for " better than mIRC".Results 1 - 100 of about 17,500 English pages for " better than Digg". (Wow. Poor Digg.)
The results will almost always lead you to discovering alternatives to whatever it is you're searching for. Using the same concept, you can use this trick to discover new music or movies. For example, " reminds me of _someband_" or "sounds like _someband_" will pull up artists people have thought sounded similar to the one you typed in. This is also a great way to find good, no-name musicians you'd probably never know of otherwise.
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on 2008-12-11 by ibancorp
Also a great brand management tool.
clear 'em out by stacking up the
-site:ebay.com -site:bizrate.com -site:shopping.com operator.
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4. Find related terms and documents
Ok, this one's direct from any straight-up advanced search operator cheat sheet, but it's still one of the lesser-used tricks in the book. Adding a tilde (~) to a search term will return related terms. For example, Googling ~nutrition returns results with the words nutrition, food, and health in them.
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Ok, this one's direct from any straight-up advanced search operator cheat sheet, but it's still one of the lesser-used tricks in the book. Adding a tilde (
~) to a search term will return related terms. For example, Googling ~nutrition returns results with the words nutrition, food, and health in them.
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3. Find music and comic books
Using a combination of advanced search operators that specify music files available in an Apache directory listing, you can turn Google into your personal Napster. Go ahead, try this search for Nirvana tracks: -inurl:(htm|html|php) intitle:"index of" +"last modified" +"parent directory" +description +size +(wma|mp3) "Nirvana". (Sub out Nirvana for the band you're interested in; use this one in conjunction with number 7 to find new music, too.) The same type of search recipe can find comic books as well.
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Using a combination of advanced search operators that specify music files available in an Apache directory listing, you can turn Google into your personal Napster. Go ahead, try this search for Nirvana tracks:
-inurl:(htm|html|php) intitle:"index of" +"last modified" +"parent directory" +description +size +(wma|mp3) "Nirvana". (Sub out Nirvana for the band you're interested in; use this one in conjunction with number 7 to find new music, too.) The same type of search recipe can find comic books as well.
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1. Make Google recognize faces
If you're doing an image search for Paris Hilton and don't want any of the French city, a special URL parameter in Google's Image search will do the trick. Add &imgtype=face to the end of your image search to just get images of faces, without any inanimate objects. Try it out with a search for rose (which returns many photos of flowers) versus rose with the face parameter.
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Make Google recognize faces
If you're doing an image search for Paris Hilton and don't want any of the French city, a special URL parameter in Google's Image search will do the trick. Add &imgtype=face to the end of your image search to just get images of faces, without any inanimate objects. Try it out with a search for rose (which returns many photos of flowers) versus rose with the face parameter.
Highlighted by ericwangqing
If you're doing an image search for Paris Hilton and don't want any of the French city, a special URL parameter in Google's Image search will do the trick. Add
&imgtype=face to the end of your image search to just get images of faces, without any inanimate objects.
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You can also Google tracking numbers for UPS, FedEx, and USPS just by entering the number (e.g. 1Z14662R0340419XXX).
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you can search for "_____ sucks" to see whether the product you are interested in gets poor reviews in online communities.
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An easy one to do, which might be a bit more well known, is to just type in "define: 'your term'". That will give a variety of definitions from a variety of sources, including things like Wikipedia.
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An easy one to do, which might be a bit more well known, is to just type in "define: 'your term'"
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Discover new fonts:
-inurl:(htm|html|php) intitle:"index of" +size +(ttf|otf) "replace me with name of font"
...or music
-inurl:(htm|html|php) intitle:"index of" +size +(mp3|aac) "replace me with artis or name of song"
...or almost anything
(just change the (mp3|aac) part to whatever file types you're looking for, separated by pipes)
Tip: Adding zip to the list of file types gets you more but often junkier results.
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