Google has some not-so-well-known search features that, if I'm not mistaken, were undocumented until recently. I only knew of two and thought that a little light for an article, but now that they have documented them I thought I might bring them to the collective's attention.

note - I'm not sure when they documented this stuff so please, no "everybody knows that shit" flames. I only know that everyone I've shown has NOT known, so this is for the rest of us.

Search a Site:
For some time now, I've taken advantage of the "site:" command which allows you to search a specific site. For example, if you wanted to search the collusion site for every article that mentions me you would enter "TexorcisT site:collusion.org". 77 at the time this was written. Not nearly enough, eh?

another note - you may find it interesting that this is how i added the little CG Search feature in the upper right of the main page for free in about 3 minutes of code. you won't be able to see the code where i add in the "site:collusion.org+" because it's in CFML. It's written in CF because the site was skripted almost 4 yrs ago and who's got the time (if it's you, let me know!) to migrate something to PHP that is werkin' fine as is.

Search for Links:
Another nifty trick is the link command. "link:" allows you to search for sites that link to another specified site. This is good if you want to see who is linked to your site. For example, if you wanted to search for how many sites link to my site you would enter "link:TexorcisT.org". 22?!? c'mon people, show some love! Collusion.org gets 644 at the time this was written.

Those are the two I've found useful for some time now. A couple of other features that I didn't know about until I decided to write this are:

Dictionary Definitions:
To use Google to find dictionary definitions, enter your query into the search box as you would normally. Any or all parts of your query for which Dictionary.com has a dictionary definition will be underlined in the center text above our search results, as seen for the query "search" in the following example:
Google results 1-100 of about 63,700,000 for collusion. Search took 0.22 seconds.

PhoneBook:
To find listings for a US business, type the business name into the Google search box, along with the city and state. Or type the business name and zip code. Entering the phone number with area code will also return a complete business listing.
To find listings for a US residence, type any of the following combinations into the Google search box:

• first name (or first initial), last name, city (state is optional)
• first name (or first initial), last name, state
• first name (or first initial), last name, area code
• first name (or first initial), last name, zip code
• phone number, including area code
• last name, city, state
• last name, zip code

Get Directions:
To use Google to find street maps, enter a U.S. street address, including zip code or city/ state, in the Google search box. (sometimes the street address and city name will be enough) For example, you could get a map to Bill Gates' home address by just entering "1835 73rd Ave NE, Medina, WA 98039".

Much of the latter three I copied directly from http://www.google.com/help/features.html, but there is more info there in case I missed a detail you might need.

I also found this while writing this, which if you ask me, is pretty fukn funny.

enjoy - tX