Favorite Hidden Google Features?

fredtheshingle asks: "Google now seems to allow you the option to track your FedEx and UPS shipments! Search using the tracking number for either carrier and a page that offers to track the package appears. Simply follow that link and the carrier's current status report is displayed. Nice! So what's your favorite hidden Google feature?"

Comments

Define:

[unixbum]

The "define:" clause which comes in very handy... define: PHP

Re:Define:

[CMiYC]

Interesting....

define: google

Re:Calculator and spell checker

[Bombcar]

Forgot to give an example:

Google Calculation

And the ever popular Question

unit conversion

[jhawk94]

As a physics/physical science lab instructor at the local university, the discovery of the unit conversion feature on Google has been extremely handy. Now when students ask whether their conversion are correct or not, I can point them to a quick easy place where they can check their own work.

In the google search box type "80 calories in joules" and voila.

Re:unit conversion

[RockyMountain]

Yeah, but don't ask it for 80 hertz in radians per second. It gives the wrong answer (off by a factor of 2*pi).

Re:Google's Best Feature

[brunson]

I was just discussing this with a friend. For those of us steeped in the lore of the internet, it's called "Kiboing"

See: jargon kibo

Or better yet: Who's got the biggest ego?

NOT

[sakusha]

Yesss! I constantly use the NOT operator, the minus sign before keywords or domains etc. You can refine searches to almost anything with AND (the default operator) and NOT.

I used to like AltaVista's old logical operators, which included parentheses for nested operations. I could do things like
((foo AND bar) OR (foo AND baz))
but I don't think Google supports anything like this.

This "hidden" category...

[Masa]

This Google Directory Category directly under the toplevel: Adult.

I have no idea, why it is always hidden (even if the content filtering is turned off) or how to reach it from the toplevel.

Have you seen

[dtfinch]

Google's Britney Spears page?

kewl languages

[boogy nightmare]

a klingon google or a a l337 google kewl huh!!

Re:Fave "hidden" feature

[Motherfucking Shit]

I'd feel much more comfortable if Google would purge its records of searches, or at least remove the IP addresses, but I suppose they have their reasons. I'll let you guess what those reasons might be.

I won't bother making you guess, I'll get straight to the point. There have been rumors for some time now that Google's largest paying clients are governments.

This rumor rings particularly true with Google Groups. So, you post something controversial to Usenet with "X-No-Archive: Yes." You, me, and every other average Joe don't see the post in groups.google.com. But guess who does see it? How about well-funded clients who are paying Google a premium to access archives of supposedly "unarchived" Usenet posts?

The same can be said of binaries. If Google has the resources to cache just about every web page in existance, and a newsfeed strong enough to capture all of the text groups, then they certainly have the resources to maintain an archive of Usenet binaries. Imagine the spook potential of having access to every mp3/warez/child porn/etc binary Usenet post for long enough to conduct an investigation, with the ability to search back through reasonably recent posts to prove prior offenses by the same person. Absolutely priceless.

I have to admit that if I were running the show at Google, I'd quickly cave in to governmental or other high-paying requests to archive things that the general public thought I wasn't archiving. Monetary offers to do this sort of clandestine spidering - whether by governments or wealthy individuals - are almost certainly too outrageous to pass up.

Just food for thought.

Re:Google Calculator

[wrexsoul]

I actually use google calculator a lot. I can't remember the last time I needed to know how much a Newton was in slug-hands per month squared (1 Newton = 4.66403422 x 1012 (slug hands) per (month squared)), but it's actually invaluable to me while I'm studying in Japan, and namely, trying to adjust myself (and mostly my recipes) to metric.

I swear, cooking is probably one of the biggest things holding the metric system back, with its much-prized teaspoons (~5 mL), tablespoons (~15 mL), cups (~200 mL), and ounces (~30 grams). Fortunately, I have accustomed myself to cooking by eye (I can measure a teaspoon pretty accurately in the palm of my hand), but still, it's important to know just how hot to make a 350 oven (180 C).

2 things

[0x20]

The calculator and the unit conversions are cool. But what I use most are:

1. The Dot. Instead of "search string", search.string works.

2. Search By Location (currently in google labs, hopefully to be released soon). I made a mycroft plugin for it. Download and unzip to your mozilla/firefox searchplugins directory, edit googleloc.src to reflect your zip code, restart browser, and it'll appear in your search dropdown. Just choose it from the dropdown and enter a query, say "pizza hut" or whatever, and bang, you get your nearest pizza huts with map and distances. (It'll stop working when search by location is eventually moved out of labs.google.com, obviously)

Re:The Standards

[daviddennis]

I was amused by the fact that Calculator answered that query, so I did a little experimentation.

Turns out that it's a numeric variable built into Calculator! Search for:

10 * answer to life the universe and everything + 5

and you'll get back:

(10 * answer to life the universe and everything) + 5 = 425

The Ghost of Douglas Adams would smile at that one. Or he'd be sick of hearing about 42 and slam the door in their face. Who knows which? I guess we'll never know :-(.

It sure brightened up my morning, on a chill rainy day, and that must count for something.

D

something I miss from altavista:

[dnight]

They had a link that would return a random result out of the database. Many a boring night was saved by that link. Does anyone know if google has something similar?

Re:something I miss from altavista:

[almightyjustin]

I don't think Google has one built in but you can use this site to do the same sort of thing using Google.

for finding wares

[Anonymous Coward]

I like to search for:

• +"Index of" +filename.exe +"parent directory"

je ll gho nerds...

[Cyno01]

naDev

Re:My favorite Google Feature

[SchnellDavis]

The trick still works fine, but you got the search term wrong, it's not "Great French Military Victories," it's just "French Military Victories." Here's the full search results

(Clicking "I'm Feeling Lucky" just opens the first link automatically, and makes for a better punchline if you're showing a friend.)

Other Oogles

[foote]

Once, for the hell of it, I tried www.boogle.com. It's Google with a different quote and a different pretty picture each time you go. So, just for more hell of it, I tried a bunch of other oogles just now. Here are a few:

joogle.com - a directory site. Never used it or heard of it.

koogle.com - same as joogle.com.

moogle.com - Part of Strayer University. Never used it or heard of it.

noogle.com - Part of moogle.com

ooogle.com - sex

roogle.com - not taken

toogle.com - got a casino alert box and then sent to usseek.com

uoogle.com - redirected to sharewareisland.com

voogle.com - get free email addresses and a disturbing picture of a frog in a bikini.

woogle.com - same redirect as toogle.com, to usseek.com

xoogle.com - not taken

yoogle.com - under construction

zoogle.com - Xaraya Content Management Solutions

Google sets set the standard

[vinit79]

Google sets (In google labs)

http://labs.google.com/sets

Its amazing, the google engine at its best. If u havnt tried it yet give it a go.

Vinit

Re:Google Calculator

[(startx)]

Airspeed of an unladen swallow

found through google of course.

google tracking clicks from Main page

[ncr53c8xx]

Anyone else notice that google now tracks all the links from the main page? Google now knows which links you go to. It has the format http://www.google.com/url?&URL&e=tracking.

Re:google tracking clicks from Main page

[ncr53c8xx]

I can't find my searches doing anything like that.

You probably don't run many searches. Upon further research, it seems that they have announced that they will track users who do more than a certain number of queries, but the count is kept using cookies, so if you refuse cookies you should be OK.

Try this one:

[Otto]

Kinda neat.

http://random.bounceme.net

Google Stats

[shermster]

I like the Google Zeitgeist . Interesting stats from Google users around the world. Imagine the marketing potential of this info.