Ever since the Internet's dozens of Web crawlers (AltaVista, anyone?) were whittled down to a single alpha engine, pinpointing your online destination has been a relative breeze. But it turns out even Google can be juiced up with a few simple tricks. We were inspired by a thread on Quora sharing tips to make searches work better. They’re simple and infinitely useful. And when it comes to muddling through the ever-expanding sprawl of the Internet, you can never have too many tricks.

Set Timers

Type in “set timer for” followed by a number of minutes, or a specific hour you’d like an alert, and Google will graciously comply with an obnoxious beeping once the moment has arrived. Just make sure the volume’s on.