Firefox and Internet Explorer only: The Surf Canyon browser extension embeds extra search results at Google, Yahoo, and MSN. With Surf Canyon installed, search the web with your favourite engine as usual. A bull's-eye icon will appear next to results—click it to expand another level of links related to the single result. My test for a "lifehacker" Google search was promising: Surf Canyon included links to the official Lifehacker book, Upgrade Your Life, and a life hacks site search engine at Google Coop. Surf Canyon is a free download, and it's available as both a Firefox extension and IE add-on.

YouTube search webapp TimeTube creates a timeline of video clips for a certain search. Search for something (like "American Idol") and you'll get back a timeline (or "tubeline") of video clips. Pan, zoom and watch the clips right on page. Fun way to catch up on old clips of interest you haven't seen in years.

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If you run into a problem on a Windows computer, all you have to do is type a little description of the problem and Google takes care of the rest; Mac users, on the other hand, often need to include a little context in their search—instead of typing a query like text editor, you type text editor mac. Google's Mac-specific portal, found at http://google.com/mac/, now includes a Mac-specific search box. It's not groundbreaking, but the guaranteed Mac-specific results could come in handy next time you're looking for a specific application or you're troubleshooting your Mac.

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Web site Boolify makes advanced web searches easy through a simple drag-and-drop interface. Intended as an educational tool, Boolify teaches users how to create boolean searches in Google using operators like OR and NOT (-) to get very specific search results. Boolean searching isn't new by any means, but if you've never gotten the hang of it or you just prefer a more visual approach, Boolify is worth a look. If you're way past this, then our top 10 obscure Google search tricks may be more up your alley.

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Google can reorder search and news results from the last day, week, a few months, or entire year by adding a small string to the end of the search URL. Just add this string—&as_qdr=d—to the address bar and hit enter. You'll get a custom drop-down box that lets you re-order results based on date. It's great for getting past the same top results you've already looked through, as well as grabbing only the newest links related to gadgets, software, or whatever else you're searching. Sadly it doesn't work on Google Images, but let us know in the comments if it does work on other Google searches.

Reader Brett writes in with his favourite Safari tip, harnessing the power of Google and keyword search tool Keywurl into one nifty time-saver. He sets his default Keywurl search to a URL that pulls up Google's first "I'm feeling lucky" result, using this string:

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You already love the one-stop convenience of shopping online at Amazon.com, but chances are you're not getting everything you can out of this feature-packed shopping engine. Did you know Amazon can email you suggestions from Mom's wish list two weeks before her birthday? Automatically ship you a new case of toilet paper every two months? Refund the difference on the price of an item you purchased that went on sale? Several advanced Amazon features and third party apps and add-ons can help you get the best deals and the stuff you want delivered to your door right on time. After the jump, add our favourite 10 Amazon power-shopper tools to your cart.

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Regular expressions are archaic-looking, extremely specific, and amazingly helpful for finding the right data, files or whatever else you need. RegEx, a free online regular expression tester, lets you hone your expression language and terms down, giving you a box to put testing text in and highlighting the words that match your query. For users of Mac OS X, Linux, or even Windows with Cygwin installed, this web-based workshop (or desktop version) is a great way to get uninhibited but real practice at file-sifting. RegEx's desktop versions require the Adobe AIR platform installed to run.

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When you just can't seem to hunt down that file you know you've got stowed away somewhere on your Mac, it's time to break out the Spotlight big guns—advanced search operators, that is. Macworld runs down advanced Spotlight operators which will be familiar to power Google searchers. Here's a sampling:

• Enclose phrases in quotes, like "time machine"
  
• Use AND, OR, and NOT to narrow or widen your search, like java NOT coffee or invoice OR bonus
  
• Search by document attributes using operators like author:authorname, kind:pdf (for PDF files), and date:today

What's your favourite Spotlight operator? Give it up in the comments.

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The Wired How-To Wiki tackles a series of ways you can find material that's disappeared off the web. Whether a site has been slashdotted to death, or the domain just isn't around anymore, there are some steps you can take to try to find a cached version of what you seek. I used to think I was clever for being able to turn up cached pages of dead or edited websites in Google. Then I fell in love with the Wayback machine for helping me find the Lord of the Rings diet ad spoof site "The Lembas Plan". Hopefully you'll be looking for something more useful. :)

Find Lost Web Pages [Wired How-to Wiki]