Google 101 - Search, Find, Know.

[Moonliner]

...

[Moonliner]

Lashy started a thread about Internet searching. I thought it would be interesting for all of us to share our google searching tips.... Here are a few of my favorites:

Search a specific site
To limit your search to results found on a specific web site start your search with site: For example:

site:www.loungeoftomorrow.com/lot bacon

would find all occurrences of the word "bacon"

Search for a phrase
To search for a specific phrase use quotes, for example:

"i like boobies" would find all occurrences of that phrase but not all the sites that just mention boobies.

You can also combine these first two and do a search for all occurrences of the phrase "i like boobies" found on a specific site:

site:www.loungeoftomorrow.com/lot "i like boobies"

Define a word
To get the definition of a word use define:

define:antidisestablishmentarism

Also note that you should not use capital letters in your general searches.

[Alex]

Know what's on the Advanced search page for Google.

The "define:" command works but the results suck so you're probably better off using dictionary.com for word definitions if you need any precision.

But with the relatively weak search operators offered by Google it's really about figuring out the best words and phrases to search and letting the algorithms (where Google excels) do their thing.

Otherwise, I'd say the key is understanding the difference between word and phrase searches and the benefits and perils of exclusionary operators.

If Google would just add proximity operators, then search string tweaking would be much more powerful.

[Cadaverous Pallor]

Seems every time I try to use old school boolean stuff these days it doesn't work. If I put +boobies -galapagos I still get the Wikipedia entry for Blue-Footed Booby as the 8th link. Is it just me, or did that work better before? Don't even try using "not", it totally ignores that. I gave up on boolean operators years ago, because it seemed Google had as well.

[Moonliner]

Originally Posted by Cadaverous Pallor

If I put +boobies -galapagos I still get the Wikipedia entry for Blue-Footed Booby as the 8th link.

The word "galapagos" does not appear on that wikipedia page.

+boobies -birds might give better results.

[Cadaverous Pallor]

Originally Posted by Moonliner

The word "galapagos" does not appear on that wikipedia page.

Ah, my mistake....and the fault likes with Wikipedia! How can it not mention it??

Guess I'll give + and - another go.