"Google Hacks and Tips" Fri Sep-17-04 05:33 PM by _Chewy_
At the company I am temping at, I saw this article published by their library staff. Couple of these I already knew, but the others I found to be extremely helpful. Try it out... you'll like it.
An undocumented tip is to enter your search words more than once.
Google searchs for as many matches for each word/phrase it can find. Use to weight searches for more important words.
Ex: search internet vs. internet internet
Hack #2) Playing Word Order.
Rearranging the words in any given query can change your results. Google ranks phrase as more important than single words. You can also try a phrase with or without quotes.
Ex: compare: returns mutual funds vs. mutual funds returns
Hack #3) The Wildcard
The concept here is very similar to using the wildcard symbol in DOS. Use an asterisk to substitute for a word within a phrase. The asterisk does not count towards the 10 word limit.
Ex: search: environmental * agency vs. environmental protective agency and see what you get.
Hack #4) The phonebook
Google has a built-in phone book. Query by name, city, state or phone # or name, and zip code.
With less data, you’ll need a tag.
Ex: phonebook:Sears NY.
To specify a business or residential listing, type the corresponding letter in front of the word phonebook like thus: rphonebook (r for resid. and b for business.)
On this note: I’ll add my personal experience with other websites that specialize in this are just as effective such as switchboard.com or anywho.com
Hack #5) When to Use site: and intitle:
The site: field allows you to search a specific domain type or a certain site.
site:edu | site:gov electricity
Intitle restricts the results to documents containing that word in the title coding of the website.
Ex: intitle:pcqanda (note, do not capitalize ‘intitle’)
Hack #6) How to find related sites.
The info:tag allows you find similar sites and those sites which are linked to the URL that is entered into the search field.
Tip #1) There is no way to truncate a word in Google. Use OR (in caps) or the pipe symbol |.
Ex: cats | kittens
Tip #2) Use quotes or a plus + sign to search words Google won’t such as “IT services”
Tip #3) Although Google is a good search engine it’s not an index of the entire internet. Use other search engines as an alternative when when your Google results are not sufficient.
#4. "RE: Google Hacks and Tips" In response to DavyWavy (Reply # 3) Fri Sep-17-04 06:14 PM by Hank52
Say Davy. You can get a neat Character Map at this Address. When you put the Cursor over the Symbol it Enlarges real "BIG" so you can see the symbol better. The larger you Expand the Program, the Bigger the Symbols. I put a Shortcut in the Quick Launch Toolbar so It's real handy.
No, Mr. Chewy...this time you're wrong...I'm looking at the keyboard and there is no indication of holding the Shift key and hitting \ is going to get me the pipe symbol. I'm sure there are many more tricks like that...but looking at the keyboard and hoping it will somehow jump out at me just won't make it happen.
>No, Mr. Chewy...this time you're wrong...I'm looking at the >keyboard >and there is no indication of holding the Shift key and >hitting \ is >going to get me the pipe symbol.
Then your key must have worn out! It is on my keyboard at work and on my boss' PC.
