I had a friend who was a real know-it-all. I would fry an egg and he would say, “That’s not how you fry an egg.” He once corrected a Spanish couple on their pronunciation of “Barcelona”, their home city. But often, and annoyingly, he would be right about things: “Hmm,” I once mused, while watching Boardwalk Empire, “When exactly was prohibition in America?” and he piped up immediately, “1920” and I retorted, “You can’t just randomly say dates” and he said, “Look it up” and I did. And he was right. (This made me want to dedicate my life to time travel in order to stall American congress, just to make him wrong.)

Now, with iPhones and Blackberries we can all be smartarses. The trick is, however, being able to get to the right information quickly enough so that you don’t miss the window in conversation to pipe up and look smug.

I have the usual tools in my repertoire for searching Google, which I have always suspected were simplistic. And, after using Google to search how to best search using Google, it seems I have suspected correctly. There were about a zillion results so what follows is a collection of tips filched from various useful sites. (I at first used dashes to differentiate between the description of what to type into Google and what the actual thing looks like. Of course, dashes are used in some search fields so I have opted for the wonderous " | ".)

Our Top 10 Tips

1. Use the exact phrase | “digital marketing”

2. Use a dash to restrict a word from your search | “digital marketing” –agency

3. Search a site | “digital marketing” site:www.soundidea.co.za

4. Use “~” to include synonyms to your search | “digital marketing” ~expert

5. Define a word | define:obfuscate

6. You can ask Google the time anywhere | what time is it in Honolulu?

7. You can also convert currency  | convert Rands to Dollars (but you will be disappointed in the amount)

8. Search something within a particular date range | digital marketing treads 2005..2009

9. If you are looking for a particular file type only | digital marketing presentations filetype:ppt

10. When looking for two related terms use OR | digital marketing OR online advertising.

Do you have others to add? Share them with is here or on Twitter @SoundIdea

Sound Idea Digital is a full service digital marketing agency that specialises in content marketing. We can develop a comprehensive content marketing strategy for your company | info@soundidea | www.soundidea.co.za