Thursday, October 8, 2009

Google Tips and Tricks

By default, Google will search the entire current index.  For example, if I enter the text “word” within Google, I received numerous entries from different sources:

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But what if I wished to search for Word within Microsoft’s web site?  I could use the “site:” parameter.  I enter the web site I wish to limit my search to after the text of “site:” then the text I wish to search for.  Notice all of the results below are to www.microsoft.com compared to the results above.

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The search results can also be limited to a particular domain type, such as .EDU.

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If I am looking for a particular file type, I can use the “filetype:” parameter.  Below is a search of Microsoft’s site for .DOC files:

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If you wish to search for a string of text, enclose the entire string within quotes.

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Google can be used as a dictionary using the “define:” parameter.

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Google can also offer the current time of any location by typing time followed by the site:

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The same trick can be used for weather:

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Google can also be used as a calculator.

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The “related:” parameter allows a search for other web sites with similar topics or content.

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If you are curious who has hyperlinks to a site, the “link:” parameter can be used.

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If a web site is off-line for some reason, the “cache:” parameter plus the normal web site address can allow access to a version that Google has kept.

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Additional Links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_hacking

http://www.google.com/help/cheatsheet.html

http://www.google.com/experimental/

http://www.google.com/options/specialsearches.html

http://www.google.com/goog411/

http://www.google.com/alerts

http://www.gmail.com/

http://reader.google.com/

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