Google search tips are provided in one of my earlier posts.

Following are some search tips for Gmail messages.

Searching based on E-Mail Headers:

a) use to:{emailid} or to:{contactname} for searching emails that you sent for a specific person.
Ex: to:jacob@gmail.com or to:chetan
b) use from:{emailid} or from:{contactname} for searching emails that are from a specific person.
Ex: from:sjoe@yahoo.com or from:San
c) use subject:{text} for searching emails which has subject
Ex: subject:resume
will list out all emails which have subject resume.
Similarly you can search for bcc: or cc:

Searching for Attachments:

a) use has:attachment , to search all email messages which have attachments attached to them.
b) use filename:doc , to search for email messages with attachments and the attachment file name contains doc.
c) you can combine both searches.
Ex: has:attachment filename:pdf

Searching based on Date:

Searching based on date requires you to put date format in yyyy/mm/dd
a) after:2009/02/09 will search for all emails after 09 Feb 2009, but not on the date.
b) before:2009/02/09 will search for all emails that came before 09 Feb 2009, but not on the date.

Boolean operators can also be used while searching in Gmail.
Ex: to:Dany subject:(stocks|news)
above search query searches for emails which are sent to Dany and with subject messages either stocks or news.

Gmail searching by default excludes Trash and Spam messages, if you want to include these folders, use in:anywhere with your search query.
Ex: from:Dany in:anywhere

1) To get current time in any city anywhere in the world. Simply type time <cityname>
   Ex: time hyderabad or time sanfrancisco

2) Google’s search box can be used as calculator. Simply type calculation you want, and click on search, you will be presented with result.
   Ex: (5+4)/2*25/23*12.23=

3) To know more about recent earthquake activity around the world. Simply type ‘earthquake’ in searchbox. If you want earthquake of a city, type earthquake <cityname>.
  Ex:  earthquake tokyo 

4) Google can also be used to convert between Unit of Measurements.
   Type “20m in ft” you will get the answer.
   Ex: 130 sq yds in sq ft or 130 sq yds to sq ft

5) To find definition of any word. Simply Type define:<word>, you will get definitions of the word from online dictionaries across web.
   Ex: define:web or define:change or define:information

6) Google also provides currency conversion information. Type “100INR to USD” in search box. You will be presented with conversion result.
   Ex: 100 GBP to USD

7) Looking for a map of any city. Type city name followed by keyword ‘map’.
   Ex: Hyderabad map
   or
   Mountain View map

8 ) To find related sites that have similar content. Type related: followed by <site name>.
   Ex: related:cnn.com

9) Google ignores common words such as and, or, the, what, who etc. If you want common word to be included in search, use ‘+’ sign followed by common word.
   Ex: Obama +and socialist

10) If you don’t want certain words to come in your search results, just put ‘-’ sign before the word, then google excludes this word from search result.
    Ex: obama -twitter

11) By putting phrases(“”) around any word, you can restrict google search for exact word and in the same order.
    Ex: “Barack Obama”
    In search results, whole word “Barack Obama” will be high lighted. If you remove phrases then you will see search results containing either Barack or Obama or both words.

12) Google search allows you to search in a particular site. use keyword ‘site:’ for this purpose.
    <searchword> site:<sitename>
    Ex: Obama site:cnn.com
    will search for word ‘Obama’ in cnn.com
    Ex: twitter site:.in
    will search in all indian sites for word ‘twitter’.
 
13) If you are webmaster or site owner and want to know, how many URLs of your site are indexed by Google, use site keyword followed by your site name.
    Ex: site:creativeslab.net

14) And last but not least simply type your name or name of the person you just met in Google search box. You will be presented with web page search results of that person.

How to let people know about content on your website or blog or portal. Submitting a sitemap to searchengines helps them to crawl site and present content in their search results. But how better your site is getting indexed or crawled by search engines, depends on how accurate and efficient your sitemap is.

Google provides some tips on how to optimize crawling and indexing.

1) Remove User Specific URLs
– Remove session id’s or user id’s or post id’s from your URLs that don’t change content.
2) Disallow actions that Google bot can’t perform
– Use your robots.txt file to stop crawling of dynamic pages or user entry forms like login page, contact form etc.
3) One to One mapping between URL and Content
–  Make sure URLs point to single piece of content. Never point multiple URLs to same content. This case often
occurs in CMS. Use rel attribute if it is difficult to do so.

Go through following presentation by Google Webmasters to know more.
Optimize Crawling and Indexing
 

Reference: Optimize Crawling and Indexing

Google opened acccounts on Twitter to let everybody know what is happening inside.

Following are Google accounts on Twitter.

twitter.com/Google – our central account
twitter.com/Blogger – for Blogger fans
twitter.com/GoogleCalendar – user tips & updates
twitter.com/GoogleImages – news, tips, tricks on our visual image search
twitter.com/GoogleNews – latest headlines via Google News
twitter.com/GoogleReader – from our feed reader team
twitter.com/iGoogle – news & notes from Google’s personalized homepage
twitter.com/GoogleStudents – news of interest to students using Google
twitter.com/YouTube – for YouTube fans
twitter.com/YouTubeES – en Espanol
twitter.com/GoogleAtWork - solutions for IT and workplace productivity

Geo-related
twitter.com/SketchUp – Google SketchUp news
twitter.com/3DWH – SketchUp’s 3D Warehouse
twitter.com/Modelyourtown – 3D modeling to build your favorite places
twitter.com/EarthOutreach – Earth & Maps tools for nonprofits & orgs
twitter.com/GoogleMaps – uses, tips, mashups
twitter.com/GoogleSkyMap -Android app for the night sky

Ads-related
twitter.com/AdSense – for online publishers
twitter.com/AdWordsHelper – looking out for AdWords questions and tech issues
twitter.com/AdWordsProSarah – Google Guide for AdWords Help Forum
twitter.com/GoogleAnalytics – insights for website effectiveness
twitter.com/GoogleAdBuilder – re building display ads
twitter.com/GoogleRetail – for retail advertisers
twitter.com/TechnologyUK – for U.K. tech advertisers
twitter.com/InsideAdWordsDE – for German AdWords customers
twitter.com/GoogleAgencyDE – for German ad agencies
twitter.com/AdSensePT – info for Portuguese-language publishers
twitter.com/AdWordsRussia – AdWords news & tips in Russian
twitter.com/DentroDeAdWords – Spanish updates from the Inside AdWords blog
twitter.com/AdWordsAPI – AdWords API tips

Developer & technical
twitter.com/GoogleResearch – from our research scientists
twitter.com/GoogleWMC – Google Webmaster Central
twitter.com/GoogleCode – latest updates for Google developer products
twitter.com/GoogleData – Data APIs provide a standard protocol for reading and writing web data
twitter.com/app_engine – web apps run on Google infrastructure
twitter.com/DataLiberation – our initiative for complete import/export of all data
twitter.com/GoogleMapsAPI – about using Google Maps embedded in websites
twitter.com/GoogleIO – Google’s largest annual developer event

Culture, People
twitter.com/googletalks – notes from our @Google speaker series
twitter.com/googlejobs – the voice of Google recruiters

Country or Region
twitter.com/googlearabia – news from the Google Arabia Blog*
twitter.com/googledownunder – Google activities in Australia & New Zealand
twitter.com/GoogleDE – Google in Germany
twitter.com/GoogleKorea - News & notes in Korean*
twitter.com/GoogleLatAm – Latin America (en Espanol)
twitter.com/GooglePolicyIt – Notes on Google policy issues in Italy

So folks just follow these accounts on Twitter and get latest updates on google.

No need to update mulitple sets of direction maps on your site, Google’s directions gadget will do the task for you.

All you need to do is add directions gadget to your web page here. A single line of code that you get from this link will do the task for you.

Apart from providing drive directions, direction gadget also gives Public Transit information for those who want to walk. Directions to customers can be given from a generic ZIP code to a specific set of latitude-longitude coordinates for any of your locations.

For Business Listing sites, this gadget will be very useful all they need to do is dynamically generate source location of each business listing and place generated code in listing page. By editing ‘up_myLocations’ value in the code of this gadget will update specific source location.

In Google words, “Operating Systems on which browsers run are designed in the era when there is no web. Google Chrome OS is an attempt to rethink what OS should be”.

What is Google Chrome OS:

Google Chrome OS is an open source, light weight operating system. Speed, simplicity and security are key aspects of Google Chrome OS with minimal user interface.
Chrome OS will have completely redesigned security architecture to protect users from viruses, malware and security updates.
It will run on both x86 as well as ARM Chips.

Why google is releasing one more OS, when it is having Android already in its lap. As per google Android was designed from begining to work across a variety of devices from phones to settopboxes to netbooks and Google Chrome is created for people who spent more time on web and is being designed to power computers ranging from small netbooks to full-size desktop systems.

We need to wait till 2010 second half for Chrome OS to be available on netbooks.

According to Google, “Hot Queries is an easy way to quickly dive into the trending points of conversation on the web. Hot Queries lists searches currently popular in Blog Search. Latest Posts on the other hand shows recent posts from popular blogs”.

In this way you can find out what people are looking for on the web with Hot Queries and you can find stories even before people starts searching for them.

Another new feature in Google Blog Search is, subscribing to RSS and Atom Feeds just like in Google Reader.