Like many of you, I’ve been happily using GMail for years. While there are many things I like about it, one in particular has always impressed me: email search. It’s no surprise that Google would add powerful search features to their email system, but there are many great features that go laregely unnoticed by many GMail users. Today we’ll go over some of GMail’s best search tricks and how to get the most out of this powerful feature.

If you keep up on tech news, you’ve doubtlessly seen all the hype surrounding Wolfram|Alpha, the new not-exactly-search-engine that’s making big waves in the web search industry. Your traditional search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN etc all work on the same basic principle: finding web pages based on keywords. Wolfram|Alpha isn’t about bringing web pages to the user, it’s about bringing information to the user.

Let’s say you open up Google and enter a query like “Princess Bride Cast”. You’d get results linking to several pages with info on who was in that cinematic masterpiece. It would probably look something like this:

If you travel to foreign countries or are not from US, Firefox has the annoying habit of returning search results in a language based on the nationality of the service provider. When I was at home in France, it’d default to Google.fr, but at work in Switzerland it would default to Google.ch.

Here is a simple trick to default your search to Google.com, regardless of which country you are in.

If you’re a heavy Firefox user like me and love to search for things utilizing Google, other search engines and photo sites then you’re going to find great use for PageZipper within your Firefox arsenal. This extension allows you to automatically load the following page within a search window without having to click on the next button. It saves you time and boosts your productivity as well.