# 15 Tricks to Using Google You Probably Don't Know



## Guest (Jan 26, 2008)

You may have mastered some of the basic tricks of Google, but most people use only about 3 percent of this search engineâs available power.

*Get Local Time:* Type in _What time is it_ followed by any city to get the current time.

*Track Flight Status:* Enter the airline and flight number to find out the departure time and estimated arrival for any flight.

*Convert Currency, Metrics, Bytes and More:* Google has a built-in converter calculator. You can enter _quarter cup in teaspoons, seconds in a year, 5 US dollars in Euros_ and countless others.

*Search for Pages That are âBetter Than,â âSimilar to,â or âReminds me ofâ:* Enter âbetter than keywordâ or âsimilar to keywordâ to find Web pages you never knew existed.

*Use Google as a Free Proxy:* Enter _cache:website.com_ to view a Web page thatâs been blocked from the computer youâre using.

*Remove Affiliate Links From Product Searches:* To avoid seeing search results from certain sites, enter _âsite:website.com_.

*Find Related Items:* Enter ~ before any search term to find related items as well. 

*Find Music and Comic Books:* Enter -_inurlhtm|html|php) intitle:"index of" +"last modified" +"parent directory" +description +size +(wma|mp3) "Band or comic book name_" to find music files and comic books.

*See Images of People, Objects, Etc.:* Type in a search term, and click on images to see photos of the results.

*Search for Faces:* If youâre looking for a photo of a person named Rose, and donât want to see photos of the flower, add _&imgtype=face_ to the end of your image search. It will show you only images of faces.

*Area Code Information:* Enter a U.S. telephone area code into a Google search box (e.g. 760), and results feature a thumbnail map naming the geographic region at the top of the results page. Clicking the thumbnail displays the full Mapquest map of the area, a less useful result since it's an approximation, not an exact map, of the area code's coverage zone.

*Universal Product Codes:* Want information about a specific product? Enter its Universal Product Code (UPC), the number on the bottom of a bar code displayed on product packaging into the Google search box (e.g.: 074101420241). If the product can be found, results include a link to the UPC Database for more information. 
This feature isn't well implemented--two of the three tests I ran for reasonably common products returned zero results. Whether that's a problem with Google or the UPC Database isn't clear. You also need to be careful to enter all digits of the UPC code, including leading and trailing digits outside of the barcode, or you may not get results, either.

*Flight Tracking:* Enter an airline name or code and a flight number (e.g.: UA 44) and you'll get two links to flight information, from Travelocity and fboweb.com. This feature works well and is robust, accepting variations on the example above such as "united 44" and "ual 44", two other ways of referring to United Airlines. It only appears to work for major airlines, however--I got no results for either Frontier or ATA airlines. 

*Vehicle ID Numbers:* Entering a Vehicle ID number (VIN) (e.g. JM1BJ225431140254) returns a link from carfax.com for a page with more information about the year, make and model of a specific car. 

*U.S. Postal Service Tracking Numbers:* USPS tracking numbers generate a direct link to the USPS Web site with information about the shipping status of a package.


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## DocM (Oct 18, 2006)

ladycat said:


> *Use Google as a Free Proxy:* Enter _cache:website.com_ to view a Web page thatâs been blocked from the computer youâre using.


Oh, thanks. Now the jerks I've banned from my website will be reading anyway!

Ha, just kidding. Sort of. 

You can also get weather by typing weather zip code or weather city name.


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## mistletoad (Apr 17, 2003)

You missed spell checker! I use that annoying "did you mean..." feature to check words I always used to get wrong.


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## Charleen (May 12, 2002)

Wow, thanks!


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## Guest (Jan 27, 2008)

If anyone has more tricks, let us know.

One trick I use not listed above is for Bible verses. Just type in the verse like this:

John 3:16

And it will bring up the text of the verse.

ETA: and word definitions. Type in:

define:word (no spaces), and it will give you the definition.

For recipes, type in:

recipe:<name of recipe> (no spaces)

And it will bring up recipes by that name.


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## Fla Gal (Jul 14, 2003)

Thanks to fin29 for sharing this one about two years or so ago.

Another one is "define" as in:

define home canning

http://www.google.com/search?q=defi...s=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

Or:

define mangle beets

http://www.google.com/search?q=defi...s=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a


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## Guest (Jan 28, 2008)

Lots of tips here:

*Google Web Search Features*

http://www.google.com/intl/en/help/features.html


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## Cat (Jun 19, 2004)

I use the define: and map: quite frequently. I use Yahoo, though.


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