Google has quickly become the world’s top search engine. This colossal giant boasts having the highest number of pages in their index and also the most advanced search algorithm. Which brings back the most relevant information pertaining to your search term. Other than just using their plain old web search, Google has a number of various multimedia search capabilities that are very useful. In this article I will just give you a brief overview of them.

Google Images:

This is pretty straightforward all you have to do is goto Google.com and click on the link above the search box that says images. Once in Google Images all you have to do is type in your search term and Google will return you only images pertaining to your search term. So if you did a image search on alligators you would get a plethora of alligator pictures.

Google Video:

This as well can be reached from Google’s homepage by clicking on the video link above the search box. Just like the images search all you have to do is type in your search term and you will get only results with videos about your search term. With Google’s recent purchase of YouTube.com all of the millions of videos that YouTube owned will now be included in Google Video. Making it that much more alluring.

Google News:

Google News is one of my personal favorites. It too can be located on the homepage above the search bar. When you type your search term into this search box the only returned results are those that have cited in news sources. Another very cool feature in the news search is you can sort the results by relevance or by date. Searching by date gives you the most recent news sources cited about whatever search term you are searching for.

Google Maps:

This again can be reached through the homepage above the search bar and is also one of my favorite’s and you will see why once you use it yourself. When here you type in your search term and the zip code. The results returned are places within that zip code that have your search term. For example, I live in South Florida and scuba dive quite often, by typing in scuba diving and my zip code it brings me back not only a list of the local dive shops, but a map pinpointing exactly to where the location is. This is extremely handy as you will see once you use it.

Now those four are all located on Google’s homepage, however there are many more unique search functions within Google. To reach these when you are on Google’s homepage there is a link that says more and once you clink on that another link says even more. That link will bring you to a page that lists all of Google’s different search functions.

Some of these include Google Scholar, which searches through scholarly papers. Froogle, which helps you search to buy things from local stores. Google Earth, which shows you detailed maps of the Earth via satellite. Google Finance, which searches business news, financial reports, interactive charts. There are many more search functions that all have their various uses. If you search the internet at all I advise using some of these. You will find them very handy, my personal favorites are the news and maps search.