Google Search

Official Site: http://google.com

The heart and soul of Google is search. It is the most basic service that Google offers. Most basic, that is, for people that want basic search. It can however provide much more powerful search capabilites for those individuals that care to learn some tips and tricks to the Google Search Engine.

One of the most common advanced features that I use is the "site:" search modifier. This modifier limits your search to the provided domain and any subdomains that might exist in the Google index.
Example: site:uvu.edu summer university
This will search any sites that exist in the Google index and end in uvu.edu. You can limit this search farther by using site:www.uvu.edu

Another tip that I use every time that I search isn't specific to Google, but I find it invaluable and will share here in hopes that others find to save them time as well. When I pull up a search page and I'm looking through the search results, I rarely know right away which result will contain the information that I am looking for. What I do is I briefly browse the list and while holding down the CTRL or COMMAND key I click on three or four of the links that look most promising. What this does is it leave my search results page unaltered and it opens up each link in a new tab withing my browser. Then I can click on each of the new tabs and scan for the information I need. If non of the pages contain the information I need, I close them and go right back to my original search page and repeat the process or refine my search. It is a simple trick, but it has saved me a great deal of time over the past several years.