Three kinds of Google searches you may not know you can do
Tech Industry
Speaker 1: When I say Googling, you probably think about typing in a search term or maybe dictating one via voice, but it all comes down to strings of words, right? Well, there are a number of Google searches that don't work that way and yet have really interesting value. Let me show you them. In case you don't already know.
Speaker 1: One of my favorites that I use all the time is called image search [00:00:30] or reverse image search more accurately. Instead of searching for an image, you start with an image and search for information about it. You go to Google images, ease on the desktop, drag the image straight over to that search page. And Google will then search for that exact image in all of its sources, placements, and variants. You'll find a lot of places where it lives and lots of different sizes. This will help you do things like find out where did this image come from? [00:01:00] How widely has it been used? Who's the originator of it? Where is there a larger version I can use respecting copyright of course, things of that nature. It's also really good. If you have an image that you've put online or that someone else has, and you wanna find out who else is using it probably without your permission, Video search doesn't really exist on Google yet, where you can take a video clip, drop it in like a reverse image search, and then find out more about that. Clip a cheat or a little workaround [00:01:30] is you can take a prominent still from that video and drag that in to Google image. Like we just saw with image search and you might find the video information. It's a little squirrly, it's not really the designed to work that way. It's been hit and miss for me, but it's worth trying.
Speaker 1: The next one is live video search or what Google calls Google lens. Let's say I've got an Android device here and under search at the bottom. You've got the usual window to type in text. You've got the microphone that [00:02:00] you know for voice, but next to that is the lesser known icon for or lens. If you don't see it on your Android phone, you can add it as an app. If I press that and I hit search with my camera. Now I've got this little square here in my camera. I can rotate that around. Let's say, I want to know about this electric screwdriver. I just hit the button. And now Google is trying to figure out if it knows what that is, is and sure enough, it knows what that is, makes it a very easy task to go find out what this is, [00:02:30] where to buy it, what model it might be. Things of that nature. This kind of search is particularly good for things where you can't derive a text string that describes it. Now, in this case, I could look up the model on the label down here, but let's say you're curious about a, a piece of furniture you'd like to buy or a piece of clothing you'd like to buy. This is excellent for that because those typically don't have names or serial numbers or model numbers that are easy to glean to type into a search.
Speaker 1: We all know [00:03:00] we can turn on our phone and say, Hey, Google, what song is this? And it'll figure out whatever it hears. Almost always tell you, song, title, artist, things of that nature, but there's a little better way to do it. And that is passively that way. You're not that dork in a restaurant. Who's saying, Hey, hang on. What song is this? Instead, you just set up your phone. So it's automatically doing it all the time in the background. This should work on pixel phones all the way back to the pixel. Two running Android 10 or later if I have it right, [00:03:30] there's a way to add it to other Android phones, but it's not for the faint of heart. Here's how you set it up on an Android phone. For example, go into your settings and then scroll down to the one that's called.
Speaker 1: Let's see, what is it? Here we go sounds in vibration. And then slide down to now playing and slide over the button that says, identify songs, playing nearby. What that does is automatically identify music near you all the time. Even if your phone is off and locked, notice what it says here. It's gonna of the song [00:04:00] on your lock screen. I mean, you literally have to do nothing, but then when you do want to access that song and say, what song was that? I want to add it to my playlist or buy it. That's where you go down to your now playing history down here. And there are all the songs. Wow. A lot of songs that my phone is heard near me playing lately. It's really twisting.
Speaker 1: Okay. The last one I wanna show you is actually kind of a cheat. It is searching with a string of words, but [00:04:30] you're not typing them. And you're also not saying them, use your mouse to mark the text and then right. Click on it and go to search in your right click menu. This is basically Google search. Now you've got an instant search of what could be a very long string and you didn't have to manually copy and paste it. Certainly not manually type it. It's just a really slick way to do a search you're already doing, but it's like that easy. I use it all the time. So now you've seen a bunch of ways to search with Google that aren't the usual typing in or [00:05:00] speaking in of a string ring of text terms. I think you're gonna find at least one of these is gonna be one that you use almost every day now that you know about them, all.
