Going beyond Google

There's no doubt that Google is an exceptionally easy and handy tool for searching the internet. This ultra-popular search engine often throws up just the answers you're looking for, so much so that the verb 'to Google' has become part of everyday speech.

For specific types of information, though, there are quicker and more direct ways of getting at the facts than using a search engine.

By choosing the best source of information for any query, you can make the internet an even more useful reference resource. Here, we list some of the most productive places to look for specific information.

People and places
The internet is great when it comes to tracking down someone's contact details or gathering more information about the places we live in or visit.

There are plenty of specialist websites devoted to finding addresses, postcodes and telephone numbers and many others provide detailed knowledge of events, facilities, local government and public services in your area.

Let's start by looking at how to find contact details online. If you are looking for an address and already know the postcode, the Royal Mail site lists all the addresses fitting a particular postcode.

The process works in reverse too, so if you need to find a postcode for any given address, go to Royal Mail's Postcode Finder. You have to register to use this service, but it's free and you can check up to eight postcodes within any 24-hour period.

Phone numbers are easy to find online and can be looked up using BT's online directory enquiries service. You can search for residential phone numbers and business numbers by business name or type.

One particular advantage of online directory enquiries is that it needn't cost you a bean above and beyond the cost of your internet access.

Alternatively, you can search for business phone numbers in a specific area using Yell, the internet version of Yellow Pages.

The Local Focus section also provides information on the community resources, services and leisure activities on offer in your neck of the woods when you type in a town, city or postcode. You can also look up business phone numbers at 118888.

Local knowledge
UpMyStreet aims to provide a wide range of information about the area you live in. Enter your postcode and you can find details of your nearest plumber, average house prices and crime statistics.

If you would like to find out more about where you live, tune into your local radio station's website. BBC local radio is particularly useful as stations have a remit to provide community information as well as entertainment. Nearly all the BBC stations have corresponding websites. You can find a list of them here.

Local radio station sites usually offer details of upcoming events in your area, but these can often be found on town, city or county council sites too. This is also the place to go for local government and public services information, for everything from swimming pool opening times to the name and address of your local councillor. There is an exhaustive list of local council websites here.

If you want to find out more about your local MP, details can be found here. Information about MEPs is listed here.

There are several online destinations if you want to find a map of your area, or one you'll be visiting. Try Streetmap for high-detail, small-area street maps. You can select a location using a street name, postcode, telephone number, place name or even a longitude, latitude or Ordnance Survey reference.

Alternatively, go to the Ordnance Survey's Get-A-Map service or MultiMap for maps of larger areas.

Out and about
When travelling further afield than the UK, there are plenty of websites that can come in very handy. They can assist with travel arrangements, and advise on the latest currency conversion rates. Areas in the world where travel is not currently recommended due to security concerns are also flagged up.

The best place to go for information on departures, arrivals and, of course, delays is the British Airports Authority. The site covers seven major airports in Britain, and provides live details of air traffic. If your flight is leaving from or coming into an airport not covered on the BAA site, you can find a list of most of the others in the UK here.

When it comes to finding cheap tickets, there's a huge range of sites available, from the popular lastminute.com to lesser known ones such as onlinetravel.com, which compares up to 500 flights with different carriers to find the best value.

You can even design and book an entire holiday online. A good way of finding a suitable travel agent is through the Association of British Travel Agents, which lists details of its 1,800 members on its site.

A global perspective
Thanks to the euro, dealing with your money in Europe is now a lot simpler than it was. However, there are still plenty of places with other currencies to worry about. The Universal Currency Converter is a very useful website for this.

With increasing levels of violence in the world at the moment there are some places you really shouldn't contemplate visiting. To check the status of any travel advice from the UK government, visit the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and select Travel Advice. There's a surprisingly long list of 32 countries, or areas within them, to which you are advised not to travel for any reason.

Health matters
There are plenty of resources on the internet for both NHS and private patients, whether you stick to conventional treatments or lean towards alternative remedies. The newest arm of NHS health provision has an online presence at NHS Direct Online. This includes a Health Encyclopaedia providing details of most common ailments, their causes and treatments. There's a separate section detailing typical treatments too.

Independent advice on health issues is also available through sites such as BBC Health, and Patient UK.Patient UK provides extensive lists of related sites for both general health and dental health issues, and a large range of downloadable and printable leaflets.

For specific dental information, the British Dental Health Foundation offers some useful pages. Help finding an NHS dentist in your area is provided here.

Private healthcare company Bupa offers information on health-related issues on its website. Choose Health Information at the top of the home page for an A-Z guide to conditions, symptoms and their treatment, information on commonly used medicines and their uses, how they work, side effects and the alternative treatments available. There are also tests you can take online to see how healthy you really are, and there's advice on living a healthier lifestyle.

Food and drink
There are plenty of sites devoted to food and drink and how to get the best from both. And while there may be plenty of places wanting to sell you fine foods and wines there are also many sites offering impartial advice and recipes. One of the best places to start is the BBC Food website where there's a good selection of recipes and discussion of related topics.

Part of the site is produced to promote the BBC's food and drink programmes and there are links from here to the websites of specific TV and radio chefs.

If you're after traditional and homely fare, you could try Delia Smith. For more modern menus, Jamie Oliver has a very trendy site, although you have to dig around in the archive for recipes.

For a massive selection of recipes in one place, head for the recipe search section of the Sainsbury's website. You can even search for recipes that incorporate ingredients you happen to have in the fridge. You can also search for budget meals, find recipes suitable for vegans or those with gluten allergies, or look for recipes from around the world. The Vegetarian Society offers 600 delicious veggie dishes.

The difficulty when searching for websites on wine is to find one that isn't going to try to sell you some. Tom Cannavan's Wine Pages is fully independent and offers hints, tips and buying advice from a well-regarded set of writers and columnists.

Home improvements
Retailer B&Q provides a wealth of information and advice on a wide variety of DIY projects on its site. Click on the How To button on the home page to access the How To library of step-by-step guides to completing various DIY jobs.

Although sponsored by a range of commercial DIY product manufacturers, diyfixit also provides a comprehensive selection of well-structured information. There are plenty of descriptions and advice on popular jobs, with safety warnings included.

The BBC has a Homes page which offers help around the house, courtesy of its DIY SOS experts. There aren't that many projects outlined, but those that are there include photo-illustrated, step-by-step guides to help you along.

InterDIY is probably the best of the home-improvement bunch. It's a search engine specific to DIY and offers a lot of instruction on typical household projects, as well as links to suppliers of materials and tools.

Doing the spadework
The Royal Horticultural Society offers an extensive advice section within its well-laid-out and informative website. A veritable Gardeners' Question Time full of soil pH, moisture content and horticultural fleece, you could spend hours wandering around this site's beds and borders.

Then, of course, there's the BBC's Gardening site which offers lots of gardening tips, and plenty of information about the Beeb's many takes on gardening programmes.

Good references
Say 'books' and 'internet' in the same sentence and Amazon invariably pops up. The best-known bookseller in cyberspace now offers a wide selection of other goods, but still has one of the biggest book sales floors around. It can get any book in stock to you within a day or two.

If you just want to find out about books, rather than buy them, the British Library has invested heavily in its internet content. As well as headline grabbers, like its zoomable pages of the Lindisfarne Gospels, it also maintains comprehensive lists of books in and out of print in the British Library Public Catalogue.

If you want to go the final step and download books from an internet library, go to Project Gutenberg. The books have to be out of copyright (which means more than 75 years old) and so far there are around 6,000 of them. It's a great source of classics with the added benefit of no late-return fines.