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Subscribe5 Google tricks you simply need to know
The Google search engine is great at returning accurate and up to the minute results for any search term. BUT what if you need more? What if you’re looking for more out of Google than just a list of websites containing the search terms you typed in? Well read on and learn some additions to your search terms that you can use to give a much more accurate results.
site:
If you’re searching for a topic that you remember seeing on a certain site, use this trick and get google to do the searching for you. Type:
site:www.website.com searchterm
..to search www.website.com for searchterm. Google will return a list of all pages within the site that have the searchterm requested.
define:
This must be one of our most widely used google ‘switches’. When looking for the definition of something, simply type:
define:word
Google will then return a list from the web of definitions of the word specified.
cache:
This search is great if you’re on a network that restricts access to certain websites. With this search string, google will return a cached copy of the page requested, and will show you it with a ‘google’ url rather than the sites url. This means you can search through googles site cache and view webpages (albeit with a little less formatting) without ever leaving the ‘google domain’.
cache:website.com
filetype:
The filetype search string allows searching for particular types of file on the web. This can be particularly useful when mixing this with one of the above searches – allowing searching of a specified site for a file type. For example – search microsoft.com for pdfs with the below command:
site:microsoft.com filetype:pdf
inurl:
This search string is very similar to the site: command, but instead of looking for a term within the sites text, it looks in the site url for the search term.
inurl:searchterm
So if you’re looking for all posts on a blog that were posted in 2010 (and provided the site uses this post handling method), you could do a search for:
site:www.hackproject.com inurl:2010
Summary:
The Google search engine has a lot more functionality than many users realise. Mastering ths powerful search engine can guarantee far more accurate and relevant search results in everyday use – something thats well worth practicing (and its free!).
Like this? You’ll love my next post on an Apple Search Engine!
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Comments (6)
Nice idea. I had been molling around an idea to do a post like this but procrastinated. I think search terminology is a big key to properly laying down a great blog post. It seems you are kind of new to blogging, but certainly getting off on a good start. I like what you have done so far steve. I’ll check back and see how your posting comes along… recholes. Do you have a twitter or facebook account set up ?
Thanks, and please do come back if you find my posts interesting… I’m aiming to make weekly updates as I have a fair few ideas already sketched out for future posts! Thanks for the comment, you ought to get a prize for being the first – I’ll see what I can do ;)
[Edit] Link to my twitter account is at the top of the page under ‘Subscribe’.. I’ll be setting up a facebook page in the near future.
Useful reminder as I had forgotten two of the five :-(
DIH
[...] Apple did Search Engines Tweet After my last post about the Google Search Engine, and being that this blog is relatively new, I’ve decided to bring the tone down slightly and [...]
I never knew about #3, #4 and #5! Thanks a million! ::goes off to search stuff better::
Thanks for the comment, glad you found them useful.