Some neat search engine features

Search engines: Tricks and Tips. 11/30/11

Do any of us really know the amazing things that we can do just by typing a few keystrokes? How many folks have experimented with search engines? Is it possible that search engines such as Google, Bing and many others have some unique features that might amuse, amaze and enlighten? Strap in for a quick tour of some interesting search engine features.

Fire up Google (www.google.com) and type in any land line phone number. Google will do a reverse lookup and display the name of the owner. There are other sites that will also provide this information such as www.anywho.com all for the amazing price of FREE.  (Martha, that’s a great price.)

Google will look up shipment tracking numbers and even airline schedules by simply typing in the tracking numbers or flight number such as United Flight 1223. This can save us the chore of having to log in to the website and navigate to the information we want. Google has incorporated into its search engine Google Suggests. This is an algorithm that compares what we type as we type it into the search box with other search keywords. Google explains it this way. “Google's autocomplete algorithm offers searches that might be similar to the one you're typing. Start to type [ new york ] -- even just [ new y ] -- and you may be able to pick searches for "New York City," "New York Times," and "New York University" (to name just a few).”Typing in a long string? Google may suggest what we want before we finish typing. Simply click on the suggestion to have the search engine take us there.

Google offers some other very simple features with their search engine that can come in handy. Type “time Portland, Or, and Google will display the time in Portland.  Type weather Miami, FL, Google displays the weather. Want news for our old hometown, type news Lancaster, Pa and up it pops. Remember capitalization is not necessary to make this work. Same thing works for stock quotes, just type in the ticker symbol and the latest stock information is available. Want to see the latest news about  an earthquake? To see information about recent earthquakes in a specific area type “earthquake” followed by the city and state or U.S. zip code. For recent earthquake activity around the world simply type “earthquake” in the search box. Google offers many more search engine tricks. Surf over www.google.com/help/features.html to see a list of the features available, explanations and examples.

Bing is search engine available from Microsoft and it too has some helpful tricks. Bing will also do conversions right from the search field. Want to know how many teaspoons in a cup, type in cup = teaspoons and Bing will deliver the answer of forty eight.  Looking for word definitions? Type define: Stertor and Bing will display the meaning of the word. Bing is so confident that users will prefer search results as presented by Bing, even if we like and use the iGoogle home page,  they have created a Firefox add-in to redirect a search typed into the Google search box to Bing for execution.  If using Firefox as our Internet browser download and install the gBing add in to use this app.  

Both Google, Bing and most search engines allow us to search by image instead of text in response to our query. Open our search engine of choice, click on the tab labeled Images and start our search. Pictures that relate to our search will appear. In addition to displaying pictures in response to our query, the ability to sort these images by size is a click of the mouse.

Just for fun surf over to the Internet Archive (www.archive.org/) which is a search engine that has been taking snapshots of the entire World Wide Web for years now, allowing us to travel back in time to see what a web page looked like in 1999, or what the news was like around Hurricane Katrina in 2005. I have used Yahoo since their inception and I was able to see what the website looked like then. Ah memories.

There are many other search engines, hundreds in fact. Type “top search engines” into any search field to see a list of companies that serve up Internet results to our burning questions. Each engine may display different results and one may be more relevant than another. The world’s knowledge is at our fingertips.

What do you want to know today?