Google search, map and mail tips and tricks

By Beacon News | Published September 1, 2011 | Categories: SEO

Found a super article on "How to Google Like Google Googles" at PCWorld today.  Here are a couple of my favorites tips:

1. It is a constant battle with my middle and high school students to get them to use "authoritative sources" for school work ("but Mooooom, EVERYONE uses Wikipedia and my teachers don't care!").  Having seen for myself the misinformation purposely posted on Wikipedia, I still insist on .edu, .gov, etc. sites for research and this tip makes that a bit easier (though the battle rages on...)
   

   Search certain types of sites or just certain sites. You can search a wide variety of sites by inserting a close angle bracket (>) symbol before the type of site you want to search. For example, [penguins site:>.edu] searches for penguins across all .edu sites; and [crater image site:>nasa.gov] searches for crater images across NASA.gov.

2. Would have been soooo helpful on my three day, agonizing move across the country last year with the dog, two distraught teenagers and a dying minivan:
   

   Find hotel prices directly on Google Maps. No more copying and pasting the address from one site into a map to see its location--for several major cities in the United States, you can easily see nightly rates when you search for hotels in Google Maps. Try it now: Search for a "hotel in Los Angeles" on Google Maps

3. Not a particularly helpful tip, but makes you really want to be a "Google Master" doesn't it?  Or is that just me???
   

   Gmail is a very deep program, with too many tips and tricks to list in this article. In fact, Google categorizes its Gmail user tips into four stages--white belt, green belt, black belt, and master. The tips for each belt can be found at Google's "Become a Gmail ninja" site. There's even a printible guide; after all, even ninjas forget their moves once in a while.