For the last couple of weeks I have told you about some interesting Google tricks you can do, some helpful, others fun. Your interest in emails has shown me that you would like a couple more of their tricks, so here we go. Remember always start on the main Google.com page for these to work. Most will anyway but they will definitely work from the main page.
Pretend that you are researching some item on Google, say bananas. You search using Google.com as usual with, "banana farms" and find many links with information. Many of the sites reference, "Chiquita" but you do not want any more information on that company. To weed out that company type, "banana farms -Chiquita". The results will have removed, "Chiquita" from most all of the searches. The use of a minus sign filters your searches by removing the following word.
You may want to get information is a particular format, say a Microsoft PowerPoint slide show which contains the phrase you are looking for. Search Google this way. Type, " ‘space the final frontier’ filetype:ppt" in the search box. Two things to remember. First thing is that you need to put regular quotes around the phrase you are searching and no space between the colon and the file type after it. You could also search for graphics using, "jpg" extension; however, it is better to use the Google image search for that. Other extensions you may search for are Word files (doc and docx), Excel (xls and xlsx), Portable Document Format (pdf), PowerPoint as stated previously (ppt), Text (txt), Open Document Format (odf) and many more from various programs.
What can you do if you remember reading an article on a site in the past and need to "refind" that article? Google allows you to search a site for keywords. For instance you remember an app I wrote about called "Ninite" and want to find it. You could go directly to my site and search for it or you could go to Google. In Google type, "ninite site: www.doubleclicks.info" search and you will find several times I have mentioned it online. Capitalization does not matter; however, spacing is very important. You must have a space between the term you are searching for and after the colon or you search may fail.
Two last items are more of a set up and not a trick. First, if you like the "I’m Feeling Lucky" link in Google and now it is gone most likely you have somehow turned on "Instant predictions." To go back to the "old" way go to Google.com page, look in the lower right corner and click, "Settings," "Search settings." Finally under "Google Instant predictions" click the "Never show instant results" button. While there you can also try, "Advanced search."
Try searching with your voice if you have not before. From Google.com click the gray microphone to the right of the search box. You will see when it is ready, then just talk away. This will only work if you have a mic on your computer and it is on/working.
