Have you ever scoured the internet for a random fact, image, or a site you heard about, but it took you longer than you would have liked? There’s no reason you shouldn’t be able to find anything quickly on the World Wide Web. Here’s five things that should help:

1. Find that image
You know what image you want, but you just don’t know where to find it, right? This is actually pretty easy, depending on your needs. As a web developer, this comes up quite often when I need a logo. Today, in fact, I needed the official seal for the town of Florence, Arizona for a client’s site. First, head to Google Image Search. Most people would just type “florence” and stumble through the 6,020,000 results. I’ve found that it’s much more efficient to tighten up your search and then broaden it if needed. Google Image Search defaults to all image sizes, but will also let you filter to show only extra large, large, medium, or small images. I prefer to look for the best quality image first, so I set my search to “Extra Large”. I also wanted a GIF image (hoping for transparency here), and typed in unique words that should be on a page the image is on, but may also be in the image’s file name and/or ALT text:

florence arizona seal filetype:gif

The results were less than favorable, so I tried again with “all images sizes” and this returned 9,780 results. The second result was the one I wanted. Try on your own. If you have to go to the second page of the search results, you can often fine tune your search with a unique word or narrowing down the size.

2. Google Calculator
If you have a Google search bar in your browser, you’re ready for this one. If not, just head to Google. Type in any mathematical equation and hit the ENTER key for the result. like below.

3. Get maps and directions
Most people who have been online for a number of years remember Mapquest, and they’re still kicking, but I want to show you a couple tricks I’ve picked up to help find a place quickly. Suppose, you need to find the closest emergency animal hospital, and you need it fast. First, head over to maps.google.com, type in your zip code, and click on the “Search Maps” button. When your map appears, remove your zip code from the search box and type in “emergency animal hospital” and click on the “Search Maps” button. If your new map does not display any pins, but there are search results on the left side of the screen, click the minus (-) at the top left of the map to zoom out a little. You can even use the Satellite view to check the parking situation. That took less than a minute for me. Once you have determined the closest location, click on its pin or its search result to see the street address. Try it yourself and let me know your fastest time.

Bonus if Street View is offered in your location. Often, I find myself wondering where the actual business is when I get to the general location pinned on a map. I could try to read the address numbers on all of the buildings, but I’m lazy and that’s not as safe as simply recognizing the building front. If you have a “Street View” button on your map, click it and you will get a little guy you can drag around. Drag him to the blue outlined street in front of the map pin for your chosen location. A street view should pop up and you can use your left and right arrow keys to spin the view and find the building. I did this last night to find a Wendy’s last night.

4. Find it even without a computer
Did you know that you can find stuff even when you are away from your computer? It’s pretty simple, really. First, head to the Google SMS page and click the “Get started now” button. Enter your cell phone number and click the “Send now” button. Within a minute or so, you will have a text message from Google and you’ll be ready to go. While away from your computer, just follow these steps to search Google quickly:

Select the text message Google sent you and choose to reply to it. In your reply, just type in what you’re looking for and a zip code (eg. “wendys 85016″) or if you don’t know the zip code, type in the cross streets, city, and state (eg. “wendys near 32nd st and thomas”). Google will then reply with a (and sometimes more than one) message with search results including addresses and phone numbers.

5. Research the easy way
Every now and then, the internet is used for actual research. Those of who who don’t know about Google Scholar should definitely take a look. It puts the powerful Google search algorithms to work on journal articles, abstracts and other scholarly literature to keep away all the distractions that a normal Google search might provide.

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