There are lots of ways to find most anything these days, but one of the things I find a bit frustrating is the small print on my smart phone and having to search and then select from the results.  So I look for ways to work within the search field.  Here are some examples:

• Convert measurements -  Enter: how many feet in an acre
• Currency conversions - Enter: 10 dollars in euros
• Calculations - Type: how much is an 18% tip on dinner?    Enter:  58.33x.18 Answer: $10.50
• Listen to music - Enter title of a song and the artist, if you know it.  The first result will be a playable file.

There is also another way to find things fast.  Think about how Google Search works.  It's collaborative. While we punch in key strokes, Google collects and stores what we write.  From this, they make suggestions based on what others have searched for...it makes sense, given that it's what you're searching for too.  I remember my first experience with this was when we built a database of commercial real estate comps.  We wanted to make sure people could search for what they wanted to do, so we made almost every field searchable.  When we studied how people searched the most, it was clear the majority only used date ranges, price and property type.  I admit I was disappointed because the search capabilities were so much more robust.  But hey, not my place to tell my customers "how to do it right".  They collectively showed me what they wanted.

The best way to see the power of this is to type only a couple of letters into the search box and see what comes up.  Finding holidays this way is easy.  Type in:  when is.  You'll see a nice list that will help you make sure you don't forget something important like Father's Day (hint; it's June 20th this year).  You'll of course want to type in your name (make sure you type in your last name letter by letter until you "pop up"), so you can give yourself a popularity test.  Don't be shy or worry that it's egotistical...everyone does it and frankly, it's not a bad idea to make sure you're not "popping up" somewhere you aren't happy about.

The reason Google is so good at this is that we tend to do a lot of the same stuff others do.  They call it Google Suggest.  It makes sense and it makes things faster for us.  While Google doesn't reveal its search algorithms, their engineers confirm that what we're looking at in Google Suggest is, essentially, a list of the most popular queries that start with a given prefix. It's unclear what time period the suggestions are pulled during, but it's safe to assume it's from "recent search activity", your own personal activity and that of your fellow web surfers.

So remember, we leave footprints wherever we go and when combined with the footprints of others, we find what we want faster.  Some things stay the same over time don't they?