Google the Amazing

Pulled this article out of the archives. Seems relevant for this site.

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I'll bet most people that use google have no idea how cool Google really is. How many other search tools have their own verb? You know, as in "I Googled myself today" or "Just Google 'weebles wobble'."

There is so much you can do with Google. An experience Googler can find anything in just a few minutes. How can one become a skilled master of the Google? Here's a few pointers to get you started discovering the power that exists behind that one simple text box.

To really use Google well, it helps to understand how the tool works. Searching is a fairly simple principle. A search engine first has to "spiders" the web. It will read one page and follow all the links on that page, then read those pages, then follow the links on those pages, and so on. Once it grabs the pages, it creates an index much like the index in a book only its designed to be read by a computer. When the user inputs his search criteria, the software looks through its massive index and tries to return the most relevant data.

This is an incredibly simplified version of what's actually going on. Google does all kinds of stuff to make sure everything is fast and highly relevant. They have lots of criteria for making those decisions and some of the smartest minds in tech world putting their tools together.

Some interesting things about google searching:

• case dOes NoT MattEr
• Google will not match partial words: a search for 'apple' will not find 'Snapple'
• Google will perform query extensions: 'apple' will find 'apples' (this is not the same as partial word matching)
• by default, Google will ignore extremely common words like 'where' and 'how'
• Google will try to help you by offering corrections to common misspellings: look for "Did you mean ..." at the top of your search results
• Searches are 'and' searches by default: you can search within results simply by adding more search terms
  

Remember that Google's database is built off of the web. It created by software, not people. When you do a search, try to be as specific as possible. The less common the word is, the more specific your results will be. 'Pine tree' will give better results than 'tree'. 'Douglas Fir' would be even more specific.

All this is great, but we haven't gotten to the real special stuff yet. Lets look at some of the special features.

Dictionary:
When you look something up, on the right side, near the top, you'll see your search term as a link. It's actually each word linked individually. If you click on a word, it will take you to the dictionary.com page for that word. Another way to use Google as a dictionary is to ask it for a definition. Use 'define: term' to request a definition. In my experience, I find that dictionary.com is better for general words, while Google's 'define:' search is better for less common, more industry specific. Google doesn't just search standard dictionaries. It also looks through specific dictionaries, like medical terminology, tech term definition sites, etc.

Tracking:
Drop a FedEx or UPS tracking number into that beautiful search bar and it will take you right to the tracking info for that package. Pretty handy.

Translate:
If you run into some site in German, Japanese, or any one many languages, Google can translate if for you. Look for the "Translate this page" link in search results or use 'translate: URL' in your search string.

Formatting:
Google is so magical, it can even index PDF documents. What's even better, it can translate PDF pages into HTML docs if you don't want to wait the nine minutes it takes for Acrobat to load up into your browser (or whatever). You can even search for files of a specific type by using 'filetype:type'.

Calculator:
This is one of my favorites. You can use an amazing variety of queries to perform calculations. Try googling 'how many feet are in a mile', '100 miles at 65 miles per hour in minutes', '4 cups in tablespoons', '4 times 10' or even figure out the benefits of carrying your friends around using '200 pounds times one mile in calories'. The point is, Google is amazing as a calculator or converter.

Etc:
There is so much more. It would take the rest of my life just to describe to you all the things you can do. Instead, I'm just going to point you in the right direction. Look at:

• http://www.google.com/help/features.html
• http://www.google.com/help/index.html
• http://labs.google.com/
• http://desktop.google.com
• http://groups-beta.google.com
• http://www.google.com/about.html
• http://www.google.com/options/index.html
• http://www.google.com/advanced_search