The Google search engine has become so successful that "to google" is now almost synonymous with "to search on the internet",

You do not have to sign up, enrol or pay to use the basic Google search engine. All you have to do is type www.google.com into your browser address line and then in the box that appears in the middle of the screen type a few words to indicate whatever it is you want to find out about.

Over the years the people at Google have become increasingly clever at getting the software to help you find what you are looking for. Its not going to be right 100% of the time but I manage to find an acceptable answer almost every time.

The first few listing will often be advertisements, written at the top will be "Ads related to your search question", the ads also have a different coloured background. By all means read them or even click on them, this is how Google makes money, by providing a platform that companies can advertise on.

After the ads the results of your search or answers to your question as determined by Google will appear. Before you click on anything skim read the wee bit of information you will see displayed in the first few you can see. You'll soon get used to identifying those that are useful and those that are no good. If what you can see is poorly written maybe you don't want to click on it.

Try starting your search questions with "what is", 'where is" or "who is". Google will then know that you are looking for a thing, a place or a person.

If you surround words with quote marks Google will search for the whole phrase. type "how do I use google search" with and without the quotation marks and you'll see you get slightly different results.

To limit the number of results you get, provide more information in the search box. If you are looking for something from New Zealand, put NZ or "New Zealand" in the search box, that will help narrow down the results.

Experiment, try questions you know the answers to, to see whether google agrees with you, google your own name you might find out something interesting about yourself!

If you don't like Google there are many others, Yahoo, Bing, Ask Jeeves and many, many more. I used Google to find this site that has a list of them http://www.thesearchenginelist.com.

Next time you want to know the answer to a question try googling it, if that doesn't work, ring me and I'll google it!