Seven Search Tips to Help You Save Money with Google

This is a guest post from Ann Smarty, a blogger, search marketer and social media enthusiast. If you like what you see here, please consider following Ann on Twitter.

Being a search marketer and online entrepreneur, I am on the web approximately nine hours per day, seven days a week. It is safe to assume that Google search takes no less than three hours of that time daily. So let me tell you, I have had the opportunity to see and try in practice all the beauty of Google search.

And like in any area of your life, Google can be really helpful for saving money when shopping. Let me share a few tips:

1. Use Google to convert currencies

The simplest, yet one the most useful Google hacks is to just type something like:

[5 pounds in USD]

and you got it:

2. Use Google as a calculator

Can’t tell how much you save with the coupon? You don’t have to go anywhere — just type it in Google and you’re done:

3. Use Google to search through reviews and forum opinions

Google has recently introduced quite a few cool features to its interface, many of which help when it comes to shopping on a budget. The first feature I want to talk about is “reviews and forums”. Here’s what you need to do:

• Search for whatever you plan to buy
• Click “More option” below the search field
• Click “Forums” or “Reviews” to see what people are saying about that thing you need to purchase

4. Use Google to find recent product news and reviews

That’s another option within the left-hand pane that we discovered in the previous tip. As you may have noticed, Google sometimes (but not always) tends to rank old pages higher just because they are supposed to be more trustworthy. Oftentimes, however, you need to know what has just been said about some product you are considering. So:

• Click “More Options“
• Choose “Reviews” or “Forums“
• Click “Past 24 hours“, “Past week“, “Past year” or “Custom date range“

5. Use Google to compare prices

Yes, you heard me right! You can let Google show prices right on your search results page for quick comparisons:

• Click “More Options“
• Click “Prices from the page“

6. Use Google to compare prices from various brands

Say, you want to search for Sony laptops as well as Acer laptops to compare prices right within the results page. If you search [sony laptop acer laptop] you will only get results where all of these terms are used on one page. Instead, you want either of the pairs [sony laptop] or [acer laptop]. So what you need to type is:

[sony laptop OR acer laptop]

Now, just click “Prices from the page” to the left of the search results and you get the list of prices for both laptops on one page throughout various stores:

7. Use Google to search within any money-saving site

This one is actually my favorite. I am so used to Google search that I never care to even look for the search option on any site. All I need is to type site:sitename.com and search within any site using the above mentioned wonderful options.

Let me demonstrate this with an example. Let’s say you want to quickly search through Buxr.com (a coupon directory) for laptop deals. You could easily do this with the following search string:

[site:buxr.com laptop]

Not only will Google show you the most recent updates from the site, it will also let you know the exact time the deal was published:

Hopefully, you will be able to take advantage of these Google search tips!