I love showing off my Google power searching skills when presenting or meeting or talking with a prospective client. I just know it boosts my credibility in the eyes of my audience. Invest a bit of time in learning some of the lesser-used Google query refinements -- i.e. the operators, parameters, and so forth -- and you too can amaze your friends, family, boss, co-workers and clients! For Part 1 of this series, I'm going to focus on the various commands:  the search operators, also known as query operators -- for the search box to restrict your results or to otherwise pull the needle from [...]

Related Topics: All Things SEO | Search Features: Commands

Ah, math. It's why I became an English major. But now math is spinning back around and haunting me in the form of my fifth grader. Last night, I found myself dealing with how to multiply fractions as part of helping with his homework assignment. Um, yeah, I think I remember how. But to be certain, could search engines help as a double-check? Enter the awesomeness of Wolfram Alpha. Doing math through a search engine isn't new. One of Google's earliest parlor tricks was allowing people to enter math problems into its search box and get answers. Indeed, I use it for this more than my pocket ca [...]

Related Topics: Features: General | Google: Web Search | Microsoft: Bing | Search Engines: Wolfram Alpha | Search Features: Commands | Search Features: Shortcuts | Top News

In a post on the Official Google Blog, Google opens up the curtains a bit on how it handles synonyms in search queries and results. It's a fairly detailed peek inside one aspect of Google's search algorithms -- an aspect that Google says affects a lot of searches: "...our measurements show that synonyms affect 70 percent of user searches across the more than 100 languages Google supports. We took a set of these queries and analyzed how precise the synonyms were, and were happy with the results: For every 50 queries where synonyms significantly improved the search results, we had only one trul [...]

Related Topics: Google: Web Search | Search Features: Commands | Search Features: Query Refinement | Top News

Recently IDG News Service asked Google's Marissa Mayer about the "perfect search engine." Here was the question posed: "What is the perfect search engine? If you had a magic wand and could create it, what would it look like? What would it do?" Mayer replied: "It would be a machine that could answer that question, really. It would be one that could understand speech, questions, phrases, what entities you're talking about, concepts. It would be able to search all of the world's information, [find] different ideas and concepts, and bring them back to you in a presentation that was really infor [...]

Related Topics: Search Engines: Experimental | Search Engines: Mobile Search Engines | Search Features: Commands | Search Features: Natural Language

Now that Google Search Options has added new features, I thought it was a good time to revisit how everything works -- and in some cases, doesn't work. Let's get up close and personal with all the filtering options! NOTE: See Meet The New Google Look & Its Colorful, Useful “Search Options” Column for important updates on how Search Options described below now work. By the way, this is a long article. If you want a digest of what's new today, then see the much shorter companion piece, Google Adds Visited Pages, Past Hour & Fewer Shopping Sites Filtering. Using Search Opt [...]

Related Topics: Features: General | Google: User Interface | Google: Web History & Search History | Google: Web Search | Search Features: Commands | Search Features: Dates | Search Features: Query Refinement | Top News