As promised, heres the juicier stuff.
Google has some advanced search options which come in quite handy, depending on what items you may be searching.
TITLE SEARCH: Allows you to search for pages and sites that have specific words or phrases in their title. For example:
intitle: spyware removal
This search would only give you results of sites that have that particular phrase in their title.
SITE SEARCH: Gives you the opportunity to search pages ONLY within a specific site or domain (or using the negative results technique from Part One you can exclude results from a specific domain or site as well). For example:
spyware remover site:spyware.pcwash.com
This search would only provide results for the phrase spyware remover from the site: spyware.pcwash.com
URL SEARCHES: Allows you to search for pages or sites that have a specific word or phrase in their URL. For example:
inurl: spyware removal
This search would only give you a list of sites that have the exact phrase spyware removal in their URL.
To do a real power search, try combining a couple of the above techniques into one search like:
intitle: spyware removal -site: ebay.com
This search would give you results for your selected phrase, found in a tile, but not on ebay.com Neat, huh
RELATED SEARCHES: Lets say you want to search for sites (competitors ) to a specific site. Once again well use our own site as an example: related: spyware.pcwash.com
This search will show sites that have related content and subject matter to the site which you typed into after related:
GOOGLE LIMITS: Google does have some limits and one of those is the actually number of keywords you can search on at the same time. That limit is (10). Type in anymore than (10) keywords and the subsequent words will not be included in your search and thus, are irrelevant.
Common words are ignored by Google such as: a, about, an, and, are, as at, be, by, from, how, I, in, is, it, of, on, or, that, the this, to, we, what, when, where, which, with.
You can override this limitation by putting a plus sign ( + ) in front of any of the above words when using them in a search phrase.
WILDCARDS: A wildcard search uses the asterisk sign ( * ) (the one above the #8 on your keyboard) to represent other non-specific characters or words. For example: anti-spyware * would turn up results for:
anti-spyware programanti-spyware softwareanti-spyware apps(and a few more).
You can use the wildcard symbol ( * ) and override the Google keyword limit and actually search for MORE than (10) keywords at a time because the ( * ) is not counted as a word.
Now, go practice on Google using these advanced tips and meet us back here next time for Part Three when we offer tips about some MORE advanced and juicier features you can use to get the most out of your searches on the worlds most frequently used search engine: Google.com
In Part One we discussed some of the more basic Google search techniques. (If you missed it you can find it here: http://spyware.pcwash.com/articles_1.html)
When not on his soapbox, Andrew Wroblewski is doing battle with the thousands of spyware programs that can affect you via his anti-spyware and spyware removalwebsite: where you can get a FREE spyware scan of your computer system.
In Part One, we covered the basics of searching on Google.com and in Part Two we moved into more advanced search techniques. In todays third installment we will peer into some ways of using Google you may have never thought of or knew existed.
DATE RANGES: You may limit your search to an exact date of a range of dates that a page was indexed by Google. To use Googles daterange function, you will need to express your dates in Julian dates. This date format is express as an integer. To convert a common date into Julian format go to: http://www.24hourtranslations.co.uk/dates.htm
As an example, if I wanted to find pages (about a certain topic) indexed by Google during the month of May 2003, I would type in:
spyware removal daterange: 2452774-2452803
TYPES OF FILES: You can limit your Google search results to specific files ending in a particular extension (.doc, .txt, .rtf, .pdf etc...)
To find a file on the topic spyware remover in Adobe (.pdf) format you would type in: spyware remover filetype:pdf
You can exclude certain types of files from your search by doing a negative search and placing a minus ( - ) sign in front of the filetype:
ANCHOR TEXT SEARCHES: Allow you to just search the anchor text in web page link anchors. Link anchors are the words that appear between: <.a href=yadayada.html>anti-spyware software<.a> In this case its the phrase Anti-Spyware Software
PLAIN TEXT SEARCHES: By using Googles intext search capabilities, you can search JUST the body text of web pages and not any links, urls or titles, just the body. Simply type:
intext:spyware remover
CACHE SEARCHING: This form of searching will only search for results on sites that are stored in Googles cache or memory. This sometimes can give you older versions of sites. Example:
cache: spyware.pcwash.com
LINK SEARCHES: Want to know how many and what sites have links back to your site Just search for your domain preceded by link:
link: spyware.pcwash.com
INFO SEARCHING: Find out what information Google has stored about a particular web page or site by searching:
info: spyware.pcwash.com
GOOGLES PHONEBOOK: Yes, Google has a phenomenal phone book database allowing you to search for both residential and business phone numbers. You may use the following search orders:
FN or FI (first name or first initial), LN (last name), cityFN (FI), LN, stateFN (FI), LN, area codeFN (FI), LN, zip codephone # including area code (ex: 111-222-3333)LN, city, stateLN, zip code
To find the phone number of the Whitehouse you would search:
phonebook: whitehouse washington dc
To find the phone number of the John Smith in Anytown, NY you could search:
phonebook: john smith ny
or
phonebook: smith anytown ny
or
phonebook: j smith ny
STOCK SEARCHING: Google can generate results on just about any stock because they use the stock information from the Yahoo! finance pages. For example:
stocks: ebay
Phew! Now, this list isnt even exhaustive, but it will give 99.99% of you enough information and insight to start REALLY tapping into the top ranked search engine in the world: Google.com Go have some fun!
Did you miss one of the previous search articles Just go to: http://spyware.pcwash.com/articles_1.html
When not on his soapbox, Andrew Wroblewski is doing battle with the thousands of spyware programs that can affect you via his anti-spyware and spyware removalwebsite: where you can get a FREE spyware scan of your computer system.