More Google Tips
Are you ready for some more Google tips. If you would like to get more out of Google, here are five more tricks for you to try out. As established in our last Google tips article, most people don’t use Google to its maximum power. I hope that article made your brain cells go Yahoo! on Google (no pun intended). If it did, then this one will make you laugh right in the face of the remaining search engines. Keep reading to find out what I’ve got for you today!
1.) Search the Saved Cache Page With Cache:
Goggle stores a cached copy of each page it has indexed. So, even if a Web site is down or the page has ceased to exist, you can still view the cached version of the page. This is done by using the “cache:” operator. To use this, in the Google search space, type in “cache: websitename.” For example, the following code will bring up a cached version of the worldstart.com homepage.
cache:www.worldstart.com
Similarly, if you want to highlight any words in the cached page that you are searching for, just simply include the word that you want to be highlighted after the Web site name. For example, the following search would highlight the word tips on the cached page of www.worldstart.com.
cache:www.worldstart.com tips
You can also access this function by doing a normal search in Google and clicking on the “cached” link Google inserts after every search entry.
2.) Search for Pages with Links to a Web Page
This is useful especially if you operate a Web site of your own. The “link:” operator lists links to Web pages that you specify in the search. For instance, the following will list Web pages that have links pointing to the worldstart.com homepage.
link:www.worldstart.com
3.) Search for Similar Pages
Let’s say you have a keen interest in Formula 1 racing and you have a favorite site that you always access to stock up on news and updates. Although you like the site, you do wish the site design was a little better and that the information was a bit more detailed. Wouldn’t it be better if you could find a Web site similar to the one you like without all the junk you usually get when you search for Formula 1 in Google?
For this, the “related:” operator comes to your rescue. “Related:” will list Web pages that are similar to the Web page you specified in your search. For instance, the following will list Web pages that are similar to the http://www.formula1.com homepage.
related:www.formula1.com
You can also access this function by clicking on the “similar pages” link on a Google search results page.
4.) Numbers Game
Google does really clever things with numbers. In fact, Google is so smart that you can tell Google that you want it to search for a range of numbers within the text. Since Google understands numbers, it finds pages that have commas and decimal points in them. It will also find numbers equal to or within the range of a given set of numbers. To do a number range search, you just need to place two periods between two numbers without any spaces. For example, 10..20 (essentially it is low number..higher number).
For instance, if you wanted to know who was president between 1920 and 1930, you would use: 1920..1930 president.
5.) Stocks
You can also get stock market updates with the help of Google. Google will treat a search query as a stock ticker symbol if you start the search string with the “stock:” operator. It will then link to a page showing stock information for the symbols you queried for. For example, to view information for Microsoft (symbol: MSFT), you will use: stock: msft
You have to type the ticker symbol name and not the name of the company. You can do a search for multiple symbols by including all those symbols after the “stock:” operator. For example,
stock: msft amd
Another way to do this is to just search for the stock symbols in Google and then click on the “Show Quotes For” link on top of the page.
Now, are you ready to give your new found Google search engine tricks a try?! Go for it!
~ Yogesh Bakshi