For those of you who don’t know, I’m a Google fan. The thing about their searches, though, is that in order to make truly effective use of it, you do have to know how to use it. Here is a tip for finding local businesses — to find furniture stores near your house, go to Google maps and in the search box, type

furniture within 20 miles Chicago IL

Your search term, say “furniture”, within X miles, then your city and state.

You will get local results. You’re welcome.  =)

You can also use the more advanced keywords “loc” and “category” if you’re brave. E.g.:

category:”Retail Stores – Furniture” loc: chicago il

I LOVE Google search tips. Got any more? Please share in the comments!

LifeHacker.com posted a Top 10 Obscure Google Search Tips a couple weeks ago that included a couple of my favorites, such as searching for similar words and currency conversion.

The readers proceeded to post a metric crapload more, including how to get weather, movie listings, and track your packages. There’s apparently a recipe search as well. Go figure.

Go give it a read if you do much searching on Google.