14 DAY TRIAL // Google is the best search engine on the Internet and everybody uses it to find websites, documents, blogs, videos and even blog posts. Although Google?s search technology is pretty revolutionary, it can do even better and this thanks to some hidden commands called operators that allow the users to customize their search queries. The folks from the Googleplex sustain they represent a simple method to communicate with the search engine and tell it to search in a different and better way than before. "Google supports several advanced operators, which are query words that have special meaning to Google. Typically these operators modify the search in some way, or even tell Google to do a totally different type of search."
But they?re not only that. The Google operators are probably the simplest way ever created to find your information in a matter of seconds. No more useless links, no more spam results, no more nothing. Just what you were looking for. Because I?m sure that many of you already know and probably use some of the operators, let me present my top 5 commands that can improve your search experience.
The "site" operator is surely the single (to be read most efficient) way to search big websites that are not offering an internal search engine or the one they provide is not as useful as it should be. Softpedia has its own search technology and a pretty good one, but let?s refer strictly to our website when it comes to the operators. Let?s suppose you want to search for Winamp, the famous audio player, on Softpedia and, by any reason, our search function offers useless results. Well, go to Google and type the following command (obviously, the site and the searched parameters can be replaced with any terms):
Google is not only a search engine that indexes websites but it also provides one-click access to documents, multimedia files and other formats compatible with the technology. That?s why it represents a simple way to find a document published on the Internet without having to install additional applications or look for a special search engine to do this. All you need to do is use the "filetype" operator that restricts your search query to a certain file format mentioned by you. Let?s say you want to search for a PDF file. Your search query should look like this:
One of the most interesting and of course useful is the Google ability to convert units such as currency, mass, length, volume, energy and others. This function especially addresses to the ones who are looking for a simple way to make their conversions without having to install special downloadable applications or visit different websites. So, if you want to transform centimeters in meters, you should type this:
I believe math is a problem for many of you but, as usual, Google comes with the best solution to satisfy our needs. The Google Calculator is a simple method to resolve basic and advanced math expressions just from the search box. Let?s say that you want to calculate an expression that looks like this:
The last hidden operator presented to you refers to the meaning of the English words. That?s right, you can get the definition of a certain term straight from Google. Type "define" before any word, press enter and let your intelligence grow up. Let?s suppose you want to know the exact definition of the word "operator". Type the following line in the search box:
As you can see, Google is no more a simple search engine that returns you websites and information gathered from the Internet. It tends to become a teacher, a simple way to resolve the common computer actions. Moreover, it offers all these functions for free so I guess Google is really able to change our lives, if it hasn?t done it already. Have a look at the following video to view the hidden operators in action.