And you thought you knew how to use Google!

We all know what it was like before Google, right? Most of the world's information was  not accessible and not categorized.  Remember trying to remember who that actor was in a movie you were telling someone about and just couldn't pull their name out of your brain but you could see their face?  So most of us use Google in a million different ways.  I know I couldn't provide most of the information in this blog without Google.  But did you know that you can get more precise information from a Google search by knowing some of the real "techie" ways to refine your searches.  Below are some tips from HubSpot Blog:

1. Explicit Phrase:
   Lets say you are looking for content about internet marketing.  Instead of just typing internet marketing into the Google search box, you will likely be better off searching explicitly for the phrase.  To do this, simply enclose the search phrase within double quotes.

   Example: "internet marketing"

2. Exclude Words:
   Lets say you want to search for content about internet marketing, but you want to exclude any results that contain the term advertising.  To do this, simply use the "-" sign in front of the word you want to exclude.

   Example Search: internet marketing -advertising

3. Site Specific Search:
   Often, you want to search a specific website for content that matches a certain phrase.  Even if the site doesn’t support a built-in search feature, you can use Google to search the site for your term. Simply use the "site:somesite.com" modifier.

   Example: "internet marketing" site:www.smallbusinesshub.com

4. Similar Words and Synonyms:
   Let’s say you are want to include a word in your search, but want to include results that contain similar words or synonyms.  To do this, use the "~" in front of the word.

   Example: "internet marketing" ~professional

5. Specific Document Types:
   If you’re looking to find results that are of a specific type, you can use the modifier "filetype:".  For example, you might want to find only PowerPoint presentations related to internet marketing.

   Example: "internet marketing" filetype:ppt

6. This OR That:
   By default, when you do a search, Google will include all the terms specified in the search.  If you are looking for any one of one or more terms to match, then you can use the OR operator.  (Note:  The OR has to be capitalized).

   Example: internet marketing OR advertising

7. Phone Listing:
   Let’s say someone calls you on your mobile number and you don’t know who it is.  If all you have is a phone number, you can look it up on Google using the phonebook feature.

   Example: phonebook:617-555-1212 (note:  the provided number does not work – you’ll have to use a real number to get any results).

8. Area Code Lookup:
   If all you need to do is to look-up the area code for a phone number, just enter the 3-digit area code and Google will tell you where it’s from.

   Example: 617

9. Numeric Ranges:
   This is a rarely used, but highly useful tip.  Let’s say you want to find results that contain any of a range of numbers.  You can do this by using the X..Y modifier (in case this is hard to read, what’s between the X and Y are two periods.  This type of search is useful for years (as shown below), prices or anywhere where you want to provide a series of numbers.

   Example: president 1940..1950

10. Stock (Ticker Symbol):
    Just enter a valid ticker symbol as your search term and Google will give you the current financials and a quick thumb-nail chart for the stock.

    Example: GOOG

11. Calculator:
    The next time you need to do a quick calculation, instead of bringing up the Calculator applet, you can just type your expression in to Google.

    Example: 48512 * 1.02

12. Word Definitions:
    If you need to quickly look up the definition of a word or phrase, simply use the "define:" command.

    Example: define:plethora

P.S.

More Google features to try:

1) under the "more" features in Google is "translate" from many languages when you type in a word.  Some languages even have a speaker symbol to here the spoken word.

2) Google Alerts--Most folks know about this news reader that follows articles on topics you are interested in

3) Google  Images- Find an image for anything.  I have even used it to see what old school friends look like now.  Unfortunately most old girlfriends have different last names!

4) Google Books-  Google is now in the process of scanning millions of books that will be available online if they can figure out how to make it work financially with publishers.  Next step beyond the E-reader system we now have.

Google trivia--What did the Google inventors first call Google?

Answer---BackRub

P.S. 2

Aren't you glad that our Congress did important business yesterday when they reaffirmed the motto of the United States as "In God we trust"?  With this Congress maybe we should change it to "God help us." Thank you Congress--now how about making our bridges safe and insuring health care for when we get sick?  Oops! I forgot that's socialism.