Everybody knows about Google. The popular search engine is so well-known that Google has become a verb, as in “I Googled his name.” But everyone also knows that finding exactly what you are looking for on Google can sometimes be frustrating. For example, a search for ‘computers‘ will return about 575,000,000 possibly related websites. It helps to narrow things down by adding additional words. Searching for ‘macintosh computers‘ decreases the number of potential relevant sites to 2,350,000 and searching for ‘macintosh computers for sale‘ returns 235,000 sites – still not a number I want to tackle.

There are, however, a few little known tricks for returning more relevant search results in Google. I have always known about some of them, but I recently came across a list that contained quite a number of tips of which I had previously been unaware. I was amazed to discover that I could use Google to do math, find phone numbers, perform conversions, get movie times, and much, much more. I thought everyone would find these tips useful, so here they are. Happy searching!

Google Search Phrase —————–Finds Pages That Contain:
macintosh computers ———————the words macintosh and computers
biking OR bicycling ————————-either the word biking or the word bicycling
“love me tender” —————————-the exact phrase love me tender
biking -motorcycle ————————–the word biking but NOT the word motorcycle
Toy Story +2 ———————————-movie title including the number 2
~auto ———————————————looks up the word auto and synonyms
define:serendipity —————————definitions of the word serendipity
how now * cow ——————————-how now separated from cow by 1 or more words
+ —————————————————–addition; 978+456
- ——————————————————subtraction; 978-456
* —————————————————–multiplication; 978*456
/ ——————————————————division; 978/456
% of ————————————————percentage; 50% of 100
^ —————————————————–raise to a power; 4^18 (4 to the 18th power)
old in new (conversion) ——————–45 celsius in Fahrenheit
site:(search only one website) ———-site:www.holeinthedonut.com “travel”
link:(find linked pages) ———————link:www.holeinthedonut.com
#…#(search w/in number range) ——cell phone $200…$300
daterange:(search w/in date range) –hurricane ike daterange:200808-200809
safesearch: (w/out adult content) —–safesearch:breast cancer
info: (find info about a page) ————info:www.holeinthedonut.com
related: (related pages) ——————–related:www.holeinthedonut.com
cache: (view cached page) —————-cache:google.com
filetype:(restrict to filetype) ————–thailand filetype:pdf
allintitle: (find keywords in title) ——–allintitle:”bicycle” race
inurl:(restrict to page URLs) —————inurl:yoga
site:.edu (specific domain search) ——site:.edu, site:.gov, site:.org, etc.
site:country code (restrict to country) -site:.br “rio de Janeiro”
intext:(search for keyword in text) ——intext:parlor
allintext: (all words in body text) ——–allintext:north pole
book(search book text) ———————-book The Lord of the Rings
phonebook:(find a phone number) ——phonebook:Google CA
bphonebook: (business phones) ———-bphonebook:Intel OR
rphonebook:(residential phones) ———rphonebook:Joe Smith Seattle WA
movie:(search for showtimes by zip) —movie:the lion king 97110
stocks:(get a stock quote) ——————-stocks:ncesa
weather:(get local weather by zip) ——-weather:97132

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