Google is one of many search engines, a search engine allows you to search the billions of web pages available on the Internet in a matter of seconds. There are, as I've said, many search engines available, all striving to do a similar job. However Google is arguably the world's most powerful and by having such a clean interface comes across as the simplest and easiest to use.

There are loads of fantastic Google tips and tricks and here we're going to focus on a few that should really make a difference to your web searching and browsing as well as being useful in themselves.

So let's say that you wanted to find out who the sixth president of the United States of America was, you could simply type into Google

who was the sixth president of the United States of America

Using its incredibly complicated algorithms Google sifts through the billions of sites it has already indexed and throws you up a good few thousand results (usually more), however, it is usually the case that the first result, or at least one of the results in the top 10, is going to be the most accurate and the most useful.

In case you're wondering, it turns out that John Quincy Adams was the sixth president of the United States.

Now a lot of people prefer to trawl the various search engines depending on what type of search they're after, however, because Google has already indexed almost all the web pages on the Internet, and because its method of searching is so complex, you can phrase your search in almost any way you wish. Its important to give Google as much as possible to work with, that's why typing in full sentences is often more likely to bring up the results you're looking for. This works because Google looks for those combinations of words in orders matching and indeed not matching the ones that you typed it in and then brings you up the most relevant pages.

Get specific

The use of quote marks can help for more specific searches, if there is an exact phrase that you're looking for, for instance if you are searching for the lyrics of a song and you can only remember one line in the middle of the verse, put quote marks either side of the sentence and Google will search for pages which have those words in the exact order in which you have typed them... for example typing

"The radio reminds me of my home far away"

gets you links to the lyrics of John Denver's Take Me Home, Country Roads!

Maths

Hours could be dedicated to explaining how to get the most out of Google, there are so many interesting and incredibly useful, easy-to-use tools, integrated directly into Google. However some of the most useful would have to be the very easiest. For instance if you want to find out the answer to a sum, for argument's sake let's says 10 plus 12, you can literally type into Google

10+12

and hit enter and the answer will come up, 22. You can do some pretty complicated sums, for instance:

(187 632 900 * 60) + 25

which is 11 257 974 025 (as if you didn't know!). You could go really advanced and try:

G*(6e24 kg)/(4000 miles)^2

which is 9.66172389 m / s2 Google will also convert units for you. For instance type in:

8542274cm to miles

and you'll get the answer 53.0792298 miles. You can convert numbers into Roman Numerals, try typing:

3561 in roman numerals

the answer which will come up when you hit enter will, of course, be MMMDLXI. And if you really want to see what it can do, try typing in the words

the speed of light divided by speed of sound

The answer at sea level is apparently 880991.09!

For a key of all the signs for Google calculator (for instance / is divide and sqrt is square root etc) click here.

Definitions

How about if you wanted a definition to a word? I've used the word algorithm, but what does it mean? Well with Google you can simply type

define: algorithm

and up will come the definition of algorithm. You'll often have a number of definitions to choose from, it's a lot like looking for the same word in a lot of different dictionaries specialising in different subjects, so you simply just look through the few definitions that have been displayed, all usually on a similar theme, and decide which one is the most relevant to you. If you ask it to define the word algorithm almost all of the results are based around the definition being a mathematical formula, they are just variations on a theme, this is typical of the way that Google displays definitions. It's well worth giving this a go, just type

Define:

and then the word that you are looking for the definition of and see what it comes up with.

Find my nearest...

Another really useful feature of Google is its ability to find your nearest pub, cinema, theatre... almost anything you can think of. This also works with specific shop names. Just type in what you're looking for, be it your local cinema or your nearest florist, followed by your postcode (the order is important!) and Google will give you the information you need. For instance:

pub SW1A 1AA

That would be the Queen's local(!).

Currency conversion

Maybe you're buying something online, but the price is only available in US dollars? No problem. Just go to Google and type in the amount, followed by the currency you want to convert it to:

35.00USD to GBP

The answer will be with you in moments - £18.12 if you really want to know. This works for just about any currency, and in either direction - just remember to use the three letter short code.



If you're interested in finding out more quick ways of getting information, next time you visit Google click About Google, and read through the various pages they have available there including, primarily, Help and How to Search.