Spellmann

How to Use Google’s 10 Secret Search Hacks

Description

We search the Internet every day. And we don’t have time to scroll through irrelevant results to find the answer we are truly looking for. Did you know Google has some secret words and techniques you can use to cut through all the garbage? In this video, Eric Spellmann shows you his ten favorite search tricks that help him find answers quickly! Put enough of these to use and you can call yourself an Internet Search Guru!

Transcript

Note from Eric: Below, you will find a word-for-word transcript of this video. I provide this as an aid for the hearing-impaired and for those who might just want to read it rather than watch the video. This conversational style is not reflective of how I write. Be nice!
Hey I am Eric Spellmann and today’s topic is a fun one. We’re gonna be looking at how to search Google better! Everyday we’re searching Google, every day we are using the internet to find something. Sometimes that search can take a little long, but today I’m gonna show you some secrets.

In fact 10 of them. Maybe a few more especially at the end. By the way, my favorites are at the end of this video, so make sure you watch till the very end. So let’s get started on how to use Google’s 10 secret search hacks.

Number 1, one of my favorite words to use in Google, whenever you do a search is the word “related”. You simply that word! Let me give you a good example. You might go to Google and you’ll simply type the word “related” a colon and then a website address (it doesn’t matter whether you enter www or not). So, I use Associated Press as an example here mainly because it’s a short one. And so you type “related:apnews.com” and what it does is it shows you sites that Google thinks are similar to that.

In other words, Google will show you other news sites in this case. So if you found a site and are wondering if there are other sites like this out there, you simply type in related:(the site’s name). There’s no spaces in there and upper case or lower case doesn’t matter. It’s one of my favorites.

Second one, site! You simply type the site. Site:(the site’s name). In this case it’s site:ap.org and what it does is it only shows pages from that site. It’s very useful when it’s a huge website and you want to search and get only results from that site.

This is a good way of searching Microsoft for a specific error code, or searching CNN or Fox News or some site that has a huge amount of information and you know it’s on some page on that site but there is no Search option on that site. Well you can use Google to search on just that site by entering site:(the site’s name). Again no spaces here. Leave the rest to Google.

Number 3 is Link. This is a fun one for those of you who have a website because basically what it will show you is people who’ve linked to you. You’re always curious about any sites linking to your site! Well heres how you find out. Google will show you all the places that link to you and where they’re located.

I’ve used this to find some very interesting things. I didn’t know some websites all around the world point to videos on my site; this is how I found out. It’s really REALLY wonderful. All you do is type in “link:(the site’s name)”. Remember, no spaces.

Number 4 is File Type. This is very useful for those of you who do a lot of research online. Because you can basically ask Google to only see files of a certain type! For example “filetype:pdf” and this way Google will only show you results that are actual pdf documents. Now keep in mind that how this works is you can type in filetype: and then enter jpg, pdf, ppt (Power Point) etc. So you type that in and then you give a space and then you put whatever your search is.

And Google guarantees that all the results that show up will only be of that file type. For instance, you can do .mp3 to find only music and .mov or .avi to find movies. There’s so many ways to use this. I use this all the time. It is really good and it is a common search that I use.

Okay cache. This comes in handy whenever a website goes down or it’s temporarily down. And you want to see what was on it. Maybe they got so much traffic on it that it got bogged down. But you just want to see what it looked like before it went own.

You know Google doesn’t update it’s index as quickly as a lot of people think. And so sometimes you can use this to actually go see the Google version of this website. So if you can’t get to a site, many times you can pull up Google’s version of that site that they have in their index. It’s a way of seeing a site even if it’s not up! So, I use that from time to time.

Info! Let’s say you forget everything about what I’ve just said, and you don’t remember any of those. This is a great way you type “info:(the site’s name) and it will give you options to the things that I’ve already showed you, mainly other ways to search. So, like I said it’s kind of a summary.

This is one of my favorites. I actually did a video on this a while back, so some of you may not have seen it or you don’t remember it. But you can actually do an image search! Now I don’t mean you can type in words and click on images and it will come up with images! NO NO NO NO NO NO! You can take an existing image that you have and ask Google to find every image that looks like that!

You actually search on the image itself. You have to go to a certain place in Google (images.google.com) and you’ll notice that in the search blank there’s a little camera. You click the camera and then you can either take a picture if you’re using a phone or if you’re on a PC, you can upload a photo. For instance, if you’re wondering are there any images of yours out there. You should upload one of your pictures and have Google search for similar pictures. The funny thing is this will also show you people who look like you! So it’s kind of creepy in a way.

You can also find people who’ve stolen your images. I’ve had this happen, where I take a picture and then all of a sudden I’m finding that picture on other websites. So I can simply search on that picture and it will tell me everywhere it exists, or even where similar pictures exist. People who’ve stolen logos, you can find it that way. So if you want more information on this particular search, watch my video titled “How to Check Your Images or Photos for Plagiarism”.

Fun with dates! Google is very smart. Remember Google is trying to give you answers. So you should be able to just type in questions that you normally would ask a human, into Google and get the same kind of answers. So dates are one of the best ways to do it. So for instance, you can go to Google and in the search blank you can type in “what day of the week is Christmas 2020?” or “what day of the week is mothers’ day?” And the list goes on.

You can also ask Google how old famous people are. Anyone, that Google knows about. Don’t ask it about me. I don’t think it knows about me! But, for instance “how old is Waylon Jennings? or “how old is Burt Reynolds?” There’s so many different questions you can ask. And it will tell you. Now it will give you results under that, but it will tell you how old they are.

You can say when is something? Google understands those types of questions. Like you can ask “when is fathers’ day?” and it will tell you the exact date. And you can get more specific with that.

What time is it in and then you can put a place, like a city. What time is it in Paris, France? What time is it in London or New York. So if you’re not sure if it’s the right time where you’re calling someone, simply go to Google and type what time is it in and type the city’s name and it will tell you.

Everyday use. And I use these all the time! Simply go to Google and type in “weather (your zip code)” and Google will give you the weather! So instead of having to go to a weather website, remembering the address, go there and find a blank and type something in. You simply need to type in “weather (your zip code)” or “weather (city state)” for a quick look at the weather forecast.

You’re wondering if you could go to a movie after work, but you don’t know what’s showing. Just type “movies: (your zip code)” and it will show you. Google is listing those things and it finds the local theaters near you, if it knows where you are and shows you movie times. Really useful.

This one I use when I’m cooking. So for instance if I need to convert cups to ounces or things like that, I simply go to Google and type in “convert 2 cups to ounces” and it will tell me, “convert 5 tons to pounds” and Google will tell me. Convert 3 yards to meters!

And Google will tell me. Any type of conversion you need to do, I haven’t found one that it can’t do! So it’s really useful if you’re needing to know what is that in Celsius, what is that in Fahrenheit, what is that in pounds, what is that in meters, liters, cups, ounces, it does it all!

You don’t know what a word means, you can simply type in “define (word)” and Google will give you the dictionary definition of it. I use that a lot too!

This is kind of cute. If you need to time something, you can type in “set timer for 10 seconds”. And Google will actually sit there and countdown and then beep at you. This is also a fun prank to play on people. If they are that sort of a person with all sorts of tabs open, you can open a new tab and hide it after setting a time. It will start beeping after that time and they won’t be able to figure it out! Its lots of fun. Anyways you can do a stopwatch too.

If you have a smartphone, take it and go to Google and simply type in “bubble level”. And what will happen is Google will show you a level and a bubble on there and you can move your phone and it will show you exactly the center.

What this allows you to do is use your phone as kind of one of those levels to see if that board is straight or leveled etc. So you can kind of use your phone or tablet that way. The reason I say use your phone or tablet is because they have a built-in sensor on where it is and obviously it won’t work on your desktop. I use this one from time to time.

And one of my favorites. And I know some of you will play with these the most! These are just for fun, some of the Google searches you can do. Simply go to Google and type “roll a dice” and yes this is exactly what it will do! It will roll a dice for you.

This one takes me back to the early days of the internet. You all must be remembering the game known as Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, where the game revolved around the number of connections you could make between Kevin Bacon (the actor) and any other actor out there. Every actor has a bacon number assigned to them.

So what you can do is you can type in bacon number (and then a famous actor’s name). And then what it does is it will tell you there number is 2, which means Kevin Bacon starred with this star who didn’t star with your star. So they are 2 away from Kevin Bacon. You must be wondering this is stupid. No, it’s kind of cute. Especially if you remember Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.

Go to Google and simply type in “do a barrel roll”. I’m not even telling you what it does. But just go to Google and type in “do a barrel roll”, hit enter and just watch what happens.

And this is my favorite of all. If you get totally bored, and your business has blocked access to all online games. You can simply go to Google and simply type “atari breakout”. Once you do that search, you’ll see a bunch of results come up. Click on images and it will turn into the Atari Breakout game that you can play with your mouse. Lots of fun.

Well I hope you enjoyed this. Google is extremely powerful. And if you know some of the search tricks, you can get your searching done quicker and you can find what you want faster!

As always if you have any questions, simply give our company a call, shoot me an email, I’ll be happy to help. I am Eric Spellmann; I’ll see you in cyberspace.