Google – King of web search engines

It is an undeniable fact that Google is the de facto King of web search engines over the years. The latest results could be seen here. Another report by Nielsen also confirms that Google is the dominant market leader with about 70% market share among all the search engines.

However do you maximize your search using Google? I am really surprised that most people do not know there are many tricks that they may use to get more out of a simple Google search. I would like to share my top 5 hidden search tricks.

  1. Google as a calculator

    When you need to use a calculator in a computer, most probably you would open the built-in calculator program. Actually you may just type in your calculation such as this 1688 + 1388 (with or without the = sign)

    You may use the Google guide here for a list of mathematical operators and functions. In this way, it is much faster than activating your calculator program in your computer.

    Google as calculator

  2. Google as a currency converter

    Just type something like this 568 US dollars in RM. Be sure to specify the country or currency symbols.

    Google as currency converter

  3. Google as a dictionary

    Very often people will go to their favourite dictionary website such as dictionary.com  or similar sites to use the online dictionary. A simpler and faster way is to type define:keyword. For example, you want to find the meaning of “bigotry”.Google as dicationary

  4. Google as a world clock

    You can find the current time of any city in the world by typing time city name. This is really handy if you are doing business with other parts of the world or you have to call someone in other countries. You wouldn’t want to call him or her in the middle of the night, right? See screen shot below.Google as world clock

  5. Google as a weather forecast station

    It is really convenient to find out the current weather condition of any city in the world by just type in for example, weather Kota Kinabalu. Not only the current weather conditions are displayed, you would see the next three days forecast as well.Google as weather forecast

Another method is to type in the zip code or post code instead of the city name.Google as weather forecast 2

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My two cents

There are a lot more Google search tips available to web users. The only problem is most people are spending more time than necessary to get a faster and more targeted search. Hope the above 5 hidden search tricks would help you in one way or another. They are really not that hidden anymore once you know them! Cheers.

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