There can often be more to a search engine than meets the eye. Sometimes, thinking a little bit outside the box when looking for information can yield some interesting results. Here’s eight things that you should be using search engines for, but probably aren’t:

1. Lyrics

If you’ve got a song playing over in you head, but can’t remember what the next line is, just search for what you do know. Chances are that it will be enough for the search results to point you to the rest of the lyics for the song, and probably for the artist’s entire catalogue. For a more entertaining version of this, try searching for mondegreens instead!

2. Recipes/cocktails

You can come at these from two directions – either type in the name of what you feel like making and let the internet bring in multiple recipes and variations for you to choose from, or type in what you have in the cupboard and see what recipes are returned based on those ingredients. With hundreds of sites full of recipes and with manufacturers offering plenty of ideas for their products on their own sites, there is sure to be something out there to suit your tastes.

3. Restaurants

Don’t feel like using a recipe? Then just search for the type of restaurant you feel like and where you want to go and see what’s around. For example, entering Japanese restaurants Melbourne into Google returns hundreds of results, complete with contact details, directions from Google Maps and user-written reviews.

4. Settle arguments

Ever wondered what the internet prefers, Coke or Pepsi? Do a quick poll by searching for each and comparing the number of result returned. The one with the higher number of results is attracting more attention and discussion on the internet (7 million in favour of Coke, incidentally). Try it with your name vs a friend, your product vs a competitor, or any other competing interests. You can also check the usage of words and phrases in this way (octopuses edges out octopi by about 20,000 results!) For a bit more fun, visit googlefight.com and watch your topics duke it out.

5. Ego search and stalking research

Have you ever searched for your own name before? How about your friends, colleagues or family? You can often be surprised by just where your name might turn up on the internet. Many employers are checking potential employees on the internet these days, not to mention first dates, so it pays to know what is out there about you. Just remember that anything you do online may come back to haunt you, so putting those photos up on Facebook may not be such a great idea after all!
If you are meeting someone for the first time, then a quick search of their name may show you what they are interested in and provide some conversation points. However, there is a fine line between research and stalking, so be careful if you decide to let someone know how you found out about their love of antique pottery…

6. Language

Find definitions, check spelling and grammar using searches. There are many style guides on the internet, and searching for a particular rule will bring up the correct usage quickly. As mentioned above, if you are tossing up between two options then searching for each one will show which is being used more. Be careful though, as sometimes the incorrect usage is more common – teh internets are not known for outstanding grammar lol!1
If your interest lies with pages in another language altogether, then Google can have a shot at translating them for you – just look for the ‘Translate this’ link next to the title of the search result. The translation will be understandable, but because a machine is doing the work, it may be a little less than perfect.

7. Number tracking

Something very practical is Google’s ability to recognise numbers, such as phone numbers and courier packages. Simply type in the number (sometimes you may need to prefix it with the company name) and Google will return the latest tracking information for a package. Phone numbers are still mainly US-only, but searching for a phone number can bring useful results, even without the search engine doing anything different. This is one you might need to experiment with, so put whatever number you need more information on in and see what comes back out!

8. Movie times

The final thing that you should be searching for are local movie times. This is a simple one: just type in the name of the movie into Google and hit search. If it is the first movie search that you have done, you will be prompted to enter your city or postcode and after that, the upcoming screenings at your nearest cinemas will show up. Just like searching for restaurants, you’ll also find Google Maps directions to the cinema and reviews of the movie.

So, what else do you search for? Share your search tactics and tips in the comments below…

Find results

These four boxes are a breakdown of the regular operators that you can use in a Google search: and, or, plus, minus and quotes. I covered these in an earlier post that you might like to review here.

The first box (with all of the words) contains all the words you wish to search for and is the equivalent of the search box on the main Google page.
The second box (with the exact phrase) lets you search for a certain phrase, such as “to be or not to be”, as a phrase rather than individual words. This is the same as if you had enclosed the phrase in quotation marks in a regular search.
The third box (with at least one of the words) works the same as putting a plus sign in front of a search term and ensures that only results that include that term are returned.
The last box in this section (without the words) is the opposite of the previous box and ensures that none of the results includes a certain term, which is the same as prefixing a regular search term with a minus sign. This is useful when searching for a term that can be easily confused, for example Prince -music.

Language

Specifies what language you would prefer the results returned to be in. Google can also attempt to automatically translate pages in other languages if these are returned in your search results. The translation may not be perfect, but it is often enough to be able to find the information you may need.

Region

This selection will limit your results according to the country of the site, which is identified by the two-letter identifier after the .com or .co in the sites address. Examples include .uk for the United Kingdom, .ca for Canada or .au for Australia. You can find a complete list here. However, not all sites have addresses that include their country, with many opting to use the general .com format. The .com format also seems to be the default for US sites, with .us domains being quite rare.

File Format

If you are looking for a file, rather than a webpage, you can specify that here. The most common use for this field is probably PDF files, but you can also specify Microsoft Office documents or other types. This is the equivalent of using the filetype: operator and can also be set to exclude certain filetypes from the results.

Date

Your search results can be limited to those pages published within a certain timeframe with this field. You can limit the results from the past year, right up to the past 24 hours. This means that you can keep track of the latest developments in a topic, or look for more historical information.

Numeric Range

This is a very versatile field that enables you to enter a range to include in your search. This may be useful, for example, if you are searching for a car and would like to specify a range of years between 1996 and 2000. This also works for other ranges, such as prices, times or distances, so you can refine your search in different ways. Specifying a range, such as 1996 to 2000, in these fields is the same as entering the range with two points between the values in a regular search, 1996..2000 in this case.

Occurrences

This field searches for your terms in certain parts of the document, namely the title, text or URL. It can also search for the given text in the links pointing to the page. This field is useful if you have a page in mind that you are trying to find and know some information about it, but can remember its location. These features can be emulated in a regular search by using the allintitle:, allintext:, allinurl: and allinanchor: operators, respectively.

Domain

Restrict your search to a specific site by specifying it in this field. In most cases you would enter the top level of the site, such as nytimes.com. This will only return results based on your keywords from the nytimes.com website. This is the same as using the site: operator in a regular search.

Usage Rights

This is an interesting field that allows you to filter your results based on the their copyright license. If you are searching for content that you are allowed to reuse or modify, this is perfect. It is based on Creative Commons licensing and, while users are encouraged to double-check the license to ensure they are acting correctly, is a great function for people looking for material to repurpose, stock materials or other free-to-use resources.

Safe Search

Adult material, such as pornography and other explicit content, can be filtered from your search results using this field. This setting is also available under the Preferences link from the main Google page, as are some of the language settings.

Similar

The last two options require you to enter a web address (URL). Specifying a web page’s URL in the ‘Similar’ section will return a list of suggested sites that Google believes are similar to the page. This is based on a variety of criteria and is the same as using the related: operator and entering the page’s address.

Links

Entering a web page’s URL into this field will return a list of other sites that link to that page. This is useful to gauge a page’s popularity, to track a discussion or find similar sites. Again, this functionality can be used directly from a regular Google search by using the operator link: and then entering the page’s URL.

Next…

And that’s everything. There are a few links at the end of the page that will take you to some content-specific versions of Google, such as Google Book Search and Google Scholar, but for day-to-day searching, you should be able to use the above fields to wade through the internet to get close to the information you are looking for. Once you are used to using the Advanced Search screen, you can then start to use the operators in your normal Google searches.

The most important advice when it comes to advanced searches is to experiment! Try different things and see how the search results vary. There’s a lot of information out there, all it needs is for you to be able to track it down.