Overview

    Google is an extremely powerful search engine, that is rarely every used too its full potential. So I thought I would create this page explaining some of the many features of Google.

    For those who don't know, Google is actually Geek for 'Swiss Army Knife'.

Keywords

    Keywords allow you to refine your search to things of particular interest.

• cache Directly query Googles Cache of Websites.
  


• define You can use the define Keyword to search like this 'define:Atomic Mass' . It should give you back some useful links to definitions.
  


• filetype You can use this Keyword for a search like 'The Meaning of Liff filetype:pdf' . The search is helpful when only looking for a particular type of document. Currently Google supports the following filetypes:ans, doc, lwp, mw, pdf, ppt, ps, rtf, txt, wdb, wk1, wk2, wk3, wk4, wk5, wki, wks, wku, wps, wri, xls. All the files are also viewable as converted HTML.
  


• intitle You can search based on the contents of the titles of web pages.
  
  
  If you want every word in your search to also be in the title you would use allintitle instead of just intitle.


• inurl With this keyword you can search based on the URL that describes a webpage.
  
  
  Again, if you want every word in your search to also be in the URL you would use allinurl instead of just inurl.


• inanchor, intext, inlinks, allinanchor, allintext and allinlinks behave as inurl and allinurl.


• link Your search will determine sites that have a link to the URL/URI you give, such as 'link:iacl.ece.jhu.edu' . Should list all the sites that have links to our home page.
  


• movie For any information about Movies.
  'movie: Taxi driver' gives information about Taxi Driver.
  
  'movie: showtimes 21218' gives showtimes information for the 21218 Zip Code.
  
  'movie: farrely brothers' gives something funny.


• rphonebook When you need to make prank calls, try 'bphonebook:George W. Bush, DC' .
  You can use bphonebook for business listings and rphonebook for residential listings.


• site To restrict your search to just certain domains, like 'Bush site:whitehouse.gov' .
  


• stocks For those of us who worry about our stocks, we can use 'stock:rhat' .
  

Operators

    Words in any Google search can be preceded with a special operator to give them marked significance.

• + We all know that Google ignores very common words like 'it', but if the word is critical to your search you can force it to be used.


• - Consider searching for Bass ( the fish ), it would be nice to filter out matches that involve Music.


• ~ Search for something and its synonyms, ie. an equivalence relation.


• OR A logical OR operator. Very useful for vacation planing.

Specialized Searches and Services

    There are a number of specialized searches supported in Google,

• http://www.google.com/linux Linux related searches.


• http://www.google.com/microsoft Microsoft/Windows related searches.


• http://www.google.com/mac Apple/Mac related searches.


• http://www.google.com/bsd *BSD/*NIX related searches.


• http://www.google.com/unclesam Uncle Sam related searches (ie. all .gov and .mil domains).


• http://www.google.com/univ/jhu JHU related searches.


• http://www.gmail.com/ GMail, Googles Mail Service.


• http://catalogs.google.com/ Googles online Catalog guide.


• http://froogle.google.com/ Be Frugal with Googles Froogle search engine (Beta).


• http://images.google.com/ The only way to find an image online.


• http://groups.google.com/ Read or post to a USENET Forum.


• http://directory.google.com/ The web broken down by topic.


• http://news.google.com/ Googles News Search Engine (Beta).


• http://local.google.com/ Googles Local Search Engine (Beta).


• http://desktop.google.com/ Google Searchs Your Desktop (Beta).


• http://scholar.google.com/ Google Schoolar searches makes searching papers esay (Beta). You can search by author, using the keyword author


• http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=1&hl=en Google Suggest (Beta), adds autocompletion to the Google Search Box.


• http://labs.google.com/personalized Google Personalized (Beta). You need to go to http://labs.google.com/personalized/profile.html to create a profile.


• http://print.google.com/ Google Print (Beta).


• http://video.google.com/ Google Video Search (Beta).


• http://maps.google.com/ Googles Amazing Map Service, really makes MapQuest.com look like amateurs. Google Maps has now been merged with Google Local


• http://labs.google.com/ridefinder Combining the magic of Google Maps and Google Local we have Google RideFinder (Beta). It helps you locate Taxis near you.


• http://webaccelerator.google.com/ Googles Web Accelerator (Beta) allow your browser (IE and Firefox) to access Google Servers as though they were your local proxy server. The Web Accelerator also compresses the data, to speed up transfer and reduce bandwidth.


• http://earth.google.com/ Google Earth (Beta), view the world from your desktop.


• http://moon.google.com/ Google Moon, find directions to your lunar destination.


• http://toolbar.google.com/firefox/extensions/ Google Extensions for Firefox.


• http://talk.google.com/ Googles IM Service (Beta) is up and running, requires a valid GMail Account to login.


• http://www.google.com/searchhistory/ Manage your Google Search History (Beta), requires a valid GMail Account to login.
• http://www.google.com/trends Allows you to enter different topics and see how many times they've been searched for in the last three years.
• http://www.google.com/coop Become part of the cooperative. You get to contribute your expertise and benefit from others doing likewise.

Things you didn't know

• Google has a very powerful built in calculator.


• Google does Currency Conversion.


• Most of the Google Holiday Logos are available at: http://www.google.com/holidaylogos.html
  Or better yet find them yourself.


• The Google Spell Checker has recorded the following insightful information: http://labs.google.com/britney.html


• Google is available in several languages, in fact Google is helping two languages live on.
  • http://www.google.com/intl/xx-bork/ Swedish Chef
  • http://www.google.com/intl/xx-piglatin/ Pig Latin


• Google Technology A look inside, to see how Google is using Pigeon Clusters.


• By connecting to Google Labs, you can help influence the Google Search Tools of Tomorrow. A long time ago the Google Image Search (Pre-Beta) was available only through Google Labs.


• http://labs.google.com/papers/ Some papers that have come out of the Google Labs.


• Google is hiring.


• Google is planing to build a research center on the Moon, codenamed Google Copernicus Hosting Environment and Experiment in Search Engineering (G.C.H.E.E.S.E.).