6 Google Search tips for productivity

Did you know that you can use google for much more than surfing? Apart from being able to just search websites you can get the local time anywhere, get stock quotes, use it as a simple calculator, and so much more. Here are a few tricks to make you a more productive Google user.

Caluclator

This is a feature I use a whole lot and it's extremely simple. Just type in a simple expression and Google will solve it for you. I think the calculator goes as far as square roots, so if you need your quadratic equations solved look elsewhere. However for simple multiplication tasks or additions, just write in what you need like so:

"126+3235″
"76*12″

Currency converter

This is something I tried a few months back because I was converting currencies a lot and I thought, hey, maybe Google has this. So I wrote "420 USD in HUF" which neatly converted my $420 into Hungraian Forints. To use this you need to know the three letter abbreviation of the currency you need, but looking that up is just a few seconds. Be sure to always caps all the characters in the currency's name though or else it won't work. Here's the syntax again:

"125 USD in GBP"
"300 EUR in USD"

Time finder

Finding the time anywhere is really easy with Google, all you need to do is prefix any city with "time". The cool thing about this is that Google lists all found cities, since there are four "Plymouth's" for example, and seeing them all listed, and their location makes finding any time a cinch, just use:

"time Plymouth"
"time Budapest"

Weather

Finding the weather in any city is exactly the same as finding the time, just prefix the city with "weather" and you'll get forecasts for anywhere. Sadly this doesn't work as flexibly as the time option, you won't get all the cities listed if you just type Plymouth, but it's still a quick and easy way to get a forecast, just type:

"weather Budapest"
"weather Los Angeles"

Unit conversion

I used to live in the US, but since I have been using meters and kilograms for 20 years, so I'm a bit out of touch with pounds and inches. In these cases unit conversion is really handy, but you usually have to visit a site for that which takes way to long. Just type it into Google! You can convert a lot of types here, just use the following syntax:

"16mi in km"
"75kg in lbs"

Spell checking

I don't know if this is a real feature or not, but if you don't know how to spell a word, just type it into Google, if you misspell it, Google will ask you if you meant something else. If you type recieve instead of receive, Google will say: "Did you mean receive?". The functions here a pretty limited and in some extremely rare words may not work, but for the simple spell checking of one word it's perfect.