nobody asked…

If you’re like me, you probably use Google every day. Occasionally I hear or read a tip on some new or semi-hidden feature that strengthens the case for this being my favorite search engine. Now The PC Guy, Peter Grad, writes in The Record an amazingly useful list of Google tips, several of which are new even to this Google veteran. Here are a few of my favorite new ones that seem most useful for what I do…

SIMILAR TERMS: Place the tilde character (~) in front of a search term and Google will show results matching your search term AND synonyms. No space between the tilde and the search term.

Example: Search on ~tv and the findings will include references to television and other synonyms.

EXCLUDE TERMS: To exclude results for a particular meaning of your search term, use the hyphen or minus character (-).

Example: You’re looking for information on the planet Mercury and don’t want to wade through thousands of hits on Mercury the car or Mercury the Roman god, etc. Search for mercury -car -god to help eliminate irrelevant results.

WILD CARDS: If your memory has holes like mine, it can be difficult to lookup a quote or phrase. Unless, of course, you know how to play the wild card in a Google search. If you cannot quite recall that obscure measure of time that Lincoln used, search on “Four * and seven years ago” (with the quotation marks). Magic, huh?

CALLER I.D. ON STEROIDS: Now this is “intelligent design!” Enter a phone number preceded by area code, no hyphens, spaces, or brackets. Try this one: 2024561111.

Useful? You betcha! But there’s more… visit Peter Grad’s PC Guy column for more explanation of these plus 6 more equally useful Google features that you may not know about.