Hi All,

We all have a site or two we regularly visit. We get some information from those site that are really useful. The purpose of starting this thread is to get collection of such site and know how to use them more effectively. Also to understand whats in those site. This will make our life a lot easier on net.

So today I am starting with my site review for Mother of all site's www.google.com. Its not a review but more of an information that i have listed below.

I dont think anyone coming to this forum needs an introduction to google, but what many people dosen't know are the innumerable features present in Google Search itself. I am posting a few of my favourite featues here.




Feature 1) Search a specific site or domain:

Have you ever come accross a situation where you are surfing a website to find some specific information and are not quiet happy with seach functionality of that site. Well, fret no more!! Google can search that specific domain for you.

Suppose you are looing for some VB String split option. So the normal search parameter you would give in google search box are?  
VB String Split and you get a whole lot of results from a whole bucnch of website. But you know that the best place to look for VB reference is MSDN. so insted of going to MSDN and searching it there just type the following in your google search box:

VB String Split site:msdn.microsoft.com

There you go... you will get all the related refernces ONLY from MSDN.

Mind you!!! this feature has really helped me a lot seaching for online references for various language. esp, Java Docs (java.sun.com)and MSDN (msdn.microsoft.com)



Feature 2) Seach an compete string:
This is a very common feature and most of you must be knowing this stuff. but just for newbiew. This is an extreamly helpful feature.
If you want to search for ,say, Doom 3 Cheats. then you would get a lot of result from google which will be combinations of Doom 3 games and General Game Cheats. But you want sites that have only resluts for Doom 3 Cheats. Just give "Doom 3 Cheats" in quotes. you will get results from the site containing on the entire italicized string.

At frist look this feature might not be a lot of useful but for regular googlers like me, this helps a lot to narrow down the search results.



Feature 3) Find meaning of a word:

This is another wonderful feature i like alot. Not many know of this feature. Many a time i am sitting on my office computers and reading someting when i come accross a word that totally stumbles me. even if you have a Dictionary installed, it gives you meaning of only "General" OR "universal" words. Try finding meaning of CICS
in webster and it will throw a lot of words in your face saying "Did you mean this?" or someting to that effect. In all, it will not have that word. (you cant expect to a single dictonary database to hold all the words!!!). Now try this in google seach box define:CICS and hit enter. you will get to what CICS means the world over.
DO NOT FORGET THE COLON (:)AFTER THE "define" KEYWORD. In the normal google feature help (url mentioned below), the colon is missing and the seach reasuls you get are not meaning of the word, but links to the website having meaning of the word.

So, who needs a dictionary after you have a google?  




 These are just a few features to name. If i keep listing all the GOOGLE features, then i will run out of different colors to display these features in!!?  . Anyways, you can find the complete list of such features at http://www.google.com/help/features.html.