9 Cool Google Search Tips and Tricks

We all know Google is a great search engine and know they have lots of other cool tools like Gmail, Documents, Reader, etc. But there are some other cool things that you can do with google that most people don’t know or they know and then they forget how to do it. Also most of these are no where to be found on Google so it’s hard for newbies to know what to do.

Number of Incoming Links
link:example.com

This tool will tell you how many other sites link to your site according to Google. If I plug in link:datinggold.com for example it says 9 sites linking in. However if I do link:allanhenning.com it says 0. Ouch! Looks like I got some work to do. Again, this may not be 100% accurate, but it shows you what Google knows. So use the command “link” if you want to know who links to your site.

Number of Indexed Pages
site:example.com

This tool tells you the number of pages you have indexed in Google, simply preface the domain with “site:”. Don’t forget the colon and make sure there is no space between the colon and the domain. For example site:allanhenning.com it show that I have 50 pages indexed. That’s not bad and gives me encouragement to continue writing on my blog. You can also the the “site” function to look for content within a particular website. For example, you can enter “site:allanhenning.com ferrari” into the search field and it will find all instances of “ferrari” within the allanhenning.com domain.

Checking the Cached Pages
cache:example.com

Some people use this if they want to see a prior version of their site. To be honest I don’t use this tool too often, but it’s still a good one. If you preface the domain with “cache”, it will bring up the cache of that site, which is basically Google’s “snapshot” of the page when it crawled the web. I can’t figure out why if I do “cache:allanhenning.com” it has no results. But go ahead and try it for your site. The results will show you the page that Google last spidered including the time and date.

Calculator that know more math than I do
2 x 2 =

Enter that into Google Search and it will correctly tell you the answer is 4. Very cool. Google can handle basic arithmetic like addition (+), subtraction (-), multiplication (*), division (/), and exponents (x^y). It can also do much more advanced calculations that are outta my league. You can also do really cool stuff like “half a cup in teaspoons“. Very cool go ahead and play with it.

Instant Stock Quote
AAPL

If you know the ticker for your favorite stock, all you have to do is enter that into the search field. If you search for AAPL, you’ll get:

Currency Conversion
100 USD to CAD

Simply enter the conversion you’d like done into the Google search box and hit “Enter” or click the Google Search button

Here are some sample queries:

• 3.5 USD in GBP
• currency of Brazil in Malaysian money
• 5 British pounds in South Korean money
• 2.2 USD per gallon in INR per litre

Weather Report
San Francisco weather

Just type the city name and “weather” in the Google search box and it will give you some nice results. For example I’m going to San Francisco this week so I can check the weather. Here’s the forecast.

To see a definition for a word or phrase, simply type the word “define,” then a space, and then the word(s) you want defined. If Google has seen a definition for the word or phrase on the Web, it will retrieve that information and display it at the top of your search results

Search By Number

Parcel tracking IDs, patents and other specialized numbers can be entered into Google’s search box for quick access to information about them. For example, typing a FedEx tracking number will return the latest information on your package. Other special search by number types include :

Those are the best ones, there are more. You can check out the page on Google that explains them all here.

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