Four clever things you can do with a Google search
(With two bonuses on us!)
Google is such a popular search engine that “to Google something” has long been in common use as a verb in itself. But if you’ve only been using a Google search page to find links to other web pages then you’ve been missing out on a whole host of little tools and features that have been added over the years. Here are the most notable examples:
1. Translate something between different languages
The “Google Translate” feature is not 100% accurate, but it’s still really good for general use, and can even detect the language that something has been written in.
Type “translate” in the Google search box and press enter.
Type or paste the phrase you want to translate in the box on the left, and choose the language you want to translate it into from the drop-down list above the box on the right.
The translation will appear in the box on the right. You can click on the loudspeaker symbols below each box to hear it spoken aloud. The other symbol under the right-hand box lets you copy the translation to your clipboard to paste elsewhere.
2. Use it as a calculator
Type “calculator” into the search box and press enter.
You can click on the buttons just as you would use a normal calculator. It even has scientific calculator functions on it such as powers, trigonometry, logarithms, exponentials and factorials!
3. Convert between different units of measure and currency
I use this feature loads when I’m baking from a recipe that’s got different types of units in. All you have to do is type what you specifically want to convert in the search bar, for example “8oz in grams”.
It works the same for currency but looks a little different. Because currency conversion rates change over time, here you get a nifty little graph to see the exchange rates over the past few weeks, months or years. [I do love a nice graph!]
If you just want a more general conversion, try typing in, for example; “how many miles in a kilometre”.
4. Listen to how to pronounce a word
As well as the pronunciation feature on Google Translate, you can just type in “pronounce” before any English word to hear how you’re supposed to say it.
Click on the loudspeaker symbol next to the phonetic spelling of the word to hear it read aloud. You can adjust the speed by clicking the toggle switch next to “slow”, see how your mouth should look as you say the word in the moving image on the right, and change between British and American pronunciation by clicking on the small arrow above the image.
5. Specifying your google search
Not only are there little tricks and tips that are built into the search engine, but there are also more efficient ways to refine your google search to get the results you want. For example, you can search for “Cake Recipe” on google. By adding “-butter” to your search, it limits the results to searches without the word “Butter” in them. You can also specify a certain phrase in your results by surrounding it in quotation marks (“ “). Much more efficient!
6. Fun games and easter eggs
Less for actual searching and more for fun and tricks, Google additionally has lots of fun games and funny easter eggs built into their search feature. For example, if you search “Atari Breakout” in Google Images, you can play the hit game “Breakout” on the Atari 2600, with google images being the blocks. If you use Google Chrome, when you lose your internet connection, you can press space to start playing the famous Dinosaur Game! There are lots more, and we highly recommend you try hunting for them.
