Blog Post

10 Simple Google Search Tricks

I’m always amazed that more people don’t know the little tricks you can use to get more out of a simple Google (s goog) search. Here are 10 of my favorites.


What are your favorite Google search tricks?

77 Responses to “10 Simple Google Search Tricks”

  1. My favorite one (not listed here?) is the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button on the main Google page, which sends you to the page of the first search result. Not sure how to do this anywhere else except the official Google page, though.

  2. Two essential and Google’s own features are:

    Type “Movies in City name” without quotes and replace “City Name” with actual City Name and you will get the list of Movies and theaters with the show timings, ratings and reviews.

    Same is with book search. You could search a book from ISBN number “ISBN xiiixixixixi-0” Google has a huge database of books in and it would fetch the book with price, readers review a preview (depends on permission granted by publisher or author of book) of the book also.

    If you want to see more sites that are similar to the one that you just found. You could use the operator “Related:”

    For e.g. you find as good site and you want to have a list of similar websites. Try “” without quotes. You may play around the usage of www as in the case of some websites, they are indexed by Google without www

  3. Thanks there are some great tips can anyone recommend the search terms for.

    Tournament Fishing, Fishing Competition, Fishing League

    I want to do a search for the above but it keeps throwing up some strange results.

    Any help much appreciated.


    • DanJax

      Billy, Have you tried using the OR with double quotes for exact matches eg. “Tournament Fishing” OR “Fishing Competition” OR “Fishing League”

  4. Your trick #2 does not work, for the reason that spelling and grammar is not a democracy. So some words are incorrectly spelled, by the majority. When you use google, you will replicate this behaviour more. When the spelling doesnâ€™t matter, why check? If it does, use a proper site!

    • Fusillade

      Prove it. Give an example of a word in the English language which has been so misspelled that even Google can not get it correct; however, do not confuse the search help feature with actual search results.

      The search help feature, which remembers the most commonly searched phrases (including misspellings) and offers these as suggestions as to what you might be searching, is not the same thing as the actual results to which the author was referring. The actual search results ignores the misspellings of all of the previous search attempts and relies solely on the results of the web search database and references to online dictionaries.

  5. Thanks for this! Super handy and most of these I haven’t ever used.

    I find myself doing the “how many” conversion a lot, which Matthew mentioned earlier. (ex: how many centimeters in an inch”)

  6. phwampfler

    I find the “filetype:” command very helpful, especially when looking for in-depth information, I almost exclusively use “search term filetype:pdf”.

  7. You can do conversions with more than just currencies.

    For baking you can do things like:

    1/4 cup in teaspoons

    Or for technical conversions:

    1GB in MB

    Or for metric to non-metric measurements:

    1km in feet

    The only thing I haven’t figure out is how to do date math like: What date is 30 days after November 15th?

    • It’s not perfect, but Wolfram Alpha ( ) will kind of answer your “30 days after November 15” question – it somehow thinks the question is related to the stock market, but it does give the right answer. It’s built more as a knowledge engine rather than a search engine, so it can generally handle this kind of thing better than Google.

  8. Nice trick!

    I would like to find also nice search “strategies”.

    For istance looking for info regarding a deasease, or a business model, or a trend, or a scientific method, ecc… could be done both using naif terms to define it or with the proper terms. The first will provide you “naif” info and website, the second will provide you “technical” info and website.

    For example: searching “organize documents in a website” will not provide as many technical resources and info as searching “card sorting”. The first will direct you to general web site with easy to understand resources, the second will direct you to interesting website with specific resources.

    That’s why you shouldn’t search directly to the info you need, but first you should make 3-4 searches looking to the “right keywords” you need, especially when you search something that could be an accademic field of study. <— This is an example of “strategy” and I would lke to read more of these; you don’t need to be an expert, because everybody of us has their own strategies; we should just share them more.

  9. For #2, I suggest using the define: operator. If you type “define:nuisance” into Google, for example, you get definitions of the word ‘nuisance’ from various Internet sources; if you misspell a word, say by typing “define:noisance”, you get a suggestion for the right spelling (“Did you mean: nuisance?”).

    Also, an addendum to #5: Google can convert all sorts of figures and values for you, not just currency. Try entering “12 miles in kilometers” or “10 years in minutes“. It doesn’t work for everything, though…at least, not yet.

      • Patrick

        Your #2 only mentions define: as a way to get the definition. Your “spelling” suggestion was to enter the word and let Google suggest a correctly spelled alternative.
        Oh? Enter “alot” and see whether Google correctly apprehends that you’re an illiterate idiot in need of spelling help. There are other similar malapropisms being perpetuated all over the web.
        Anyone serious about spelling should ALWAYS use define: or, better still, consult a dictionary (digital or paper).

  10. JGreenough

    USPS, UPS & Fedex tracking codes can be entered to get updates from their real time APIs about what city the package is in or if it is sitting on your doorstep.

    I just tested it again with Fedex and have done the others in the past.

  11. Regarding tip #4, it works even better if you type “time in” followed by a location. For instance, when typing “time in san francisco” it will actually show you the time in the suggestion dropdown…you don’t even have to hit enter.

  12. Your trick #2 does not work, for the reason that spelling and grammar is not a democracy. So some words are incorrectly spelled, by the majority. When you use google, you will replicate this behaviour more. When the spelling doesn’t matter, why check? If it does, use a proper site!

    • Telcontar

      It does, because google will know the correct word not because of the majority, but because of the huge r&d of google linguistics. So they basically know the correct word plus the common mistakes to provide you with a corrected version of your input.
      So they are not suggesting you the way most people on the web write it.

  13. Joshua Guffey

    Nice! I knew about and have used all except number 9. I’m always using these operators to tweek searchs. It’s so very powerful.

    You can also use the site: operator for some pretty amazing Twitter search results.


  14. Fantastic tips for “getting the juice” to Google!!!. If you want to search in Google the definition of a word, just use the keywords: “define: word” (more the word you want the meaning)

  15. for the “site” operator use:


    Drag it to your bookmarks bar, give it a name, and give it a try.