When you set preferences in Google, the site is customized for you every time you visit it, as long as you’re using the same computer through which you set the preferences. To provide this convenience, Google must place a cookie (a small information file) in your computer. The site and the cookie high-five each other whenever you visit Google, and then the site appears according to your settings. For this system to work, the reception of cookies must be turned on in your browser.

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Here are a few tips for finding what you want:

• Keep it short (but not too short). When you can be both brief and specific, you’re most likely to get what you want. For example, if you need a drawing of a male Muppet, a search for Bert turns up an overwhelming 40,000 results. A search for Bert Ernie gets you more than 900 pictures. And Bert Sesame Street weighs in at just over 200 images.

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Gmail offers a rich search syntax for routing through your email message archiveas if you’d expect, or indeed stand for, any less:

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• Try “ I’m Feeling Lucky.” This button offers more than a cute Clint Eastwood quote. Clicking it skips the whole results list and takes you straight to Google’s #1-ranked page for the words you typed. Google’s ranking system is its claim to fame, so this button gets it right a surprising amount of the time. For example, if you want to check out the academic offerings at Tulane University, type tulane and hit your Lucky button to arrive at the school’s home page.

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How do you have more fun when searching? Simply: become a better searcher. Here are some syntax basics as well as advanced tricks or bits of trivia for searching with Google.com:

A quote/ phrase search can be written with both quotations “like this” as well as a minus (or dot) in-between words, like-this. Google didn’t always understand certain special characters like “#”, but
now it does; a search for C#, for example, yields meaningful results. Note that not every character works yet.

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Google Fun Facts

Google sorts billions of bits of information for its users. Here are some little-known bits of information about Google:

• Google’s name is a play on the word googol, which refers to the number 1 followed by one hundred zeroes. The term was coined by Milton Sirotta, nephew of American mathematician Edward Kasner, and was popularized in the book, “Mathematics and the Imagination” by Kasner and James Newman. Google’s play on the term reflects the company’s mission to organize the immense amount of information available on the web. Read more »

You can now create your own Google personal search engine customized with your name as logo in place of Google Logo. This is pretty cool..Check out it at www.googlealive.com.