20 Great Google Secrets
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,1306756,00.asp
excl.gif No Active Links, Read the Rules - Edit by Ninja excl.gif
Google is clearly the best general-purpose search engine on the Web (see
www.pcmag.com/searchengines
But most people don 't use it to its best advantage. Do you just plug in a keyword or two and hope for the best? That may be the quickest way to search, but with more than 3 billion pages in Google 's index, it 's still a struggle to pare results to a manageable number.
But Google is an remarkably powerful tool that can ease and enhance your Internet exploration. Google 's search options go beyond simple keywords, the Web, and even its own programmers. Let 's look at some of Google 's lesser-known options.
Syntax Search Tricks
Using a special syntax is a way to tell Google that you want to restrict your searches to certain elements or characteristics of Web pages. Google has a fairly complete list of its syntax elements at
www.google.com/help/operators.html
. Here are some advanced operators that can help narrow down your search results.
Intitle: at the beginning of a query word or phrase (intitle:"Three Blind Mice") restricts your search results to just the titles of Web pages.
Intext: does the opposite of intitle:, searching only the body text, ignoring titles, links, and so forth. Intext: is perfect when what you 're searching for might commonly appear in URLs. If you 're looking for the term HTML, for example, and you don 't want to get results such as
www.mysite.com/index.html
, you can enter intext:html.
Link: lets you see which pages are linking to your Web page or to another page you 're interested in. For example, try typing in
link:http://www.pcmag.com
Try using site: (which restricts results to top-level domains) with intitle: to find certain types of pages. For example, get scholarly pages about Mark Twain by searching for intitle:"Mark Twain"site:edu. Experiment with mixing various
excl.gif No Active Links, Read the Rules - Edit by Ninja excl.gif
Google is clearly the best general-purpose search engine on the Web (see
www.pcmag.com/searchengines
But most people don 't use it to its best advantage. Do you just plug in a keyword or two and hope for the best? That may be the quickest way to search, but with more than 3 billion pages in Google 's index, it 's still a struggle to pare results to a manageable number.
But Google is an remarkably powerful tool that can ease and enhance your Internet exploration. Google 's search options go beyond simple keywords, the Web, and even its own programmers. Let 's look at some of Google 's lesser-known options.
Syntax Search Tricks
Using a special syntax is a way to tell Google that you want to restrict your searches to certain elements or characteristics of Web pages. Google has a fairly complete list of its syntax elements at
www.google.com/help/operators.html
. Here are some advanced operators that can help narrow down your search results.
Intitle: at the beginning of a query word or phrase (intitle:"Three Blind Mice") restricts your search results to just the titles of Web pages.
Intext: does the opposite of intitle:, searching only the body text, ignoring titles, links, and so forth. Intext: is perfect when what you 're searching for might commonly appear in URLs. If you 're looking for the term HTML, for example, and you don 't want to get results such as
www.mysite.com/index.html
, you can enter intext:html.
Link: lets you see which pages are linking to your Web page or to another page you 're interested in. For example, try typing in
link:http://www.pcmag.com
Try using site: (which restricts results to top-level domains) with intitle: to find certain types of pages. For example, get scholarly pages about Mark Twain by searching for intitle:"Mark Twain"site:edu. Experiment with mixing various
Links: Read the Rules - Edit by Ninja excl.gif ), but an easier way is to do a Google daterange: search by filling in a form at www.researchbuzz.com/toolbox/goofresh.shtml or www.faganfinder.com/engines/google.shtml . If one special syntax element is good, two must be better, right? Sometimes. Though some operators can 't be mixed (you can 't use the link: operator with anything else) many can be, quickly narrowing your results to a less overwhelming number. More Google API Applications Staggernation.com offers three tools based on the Google API. The Google API Web Search by Host (GAWSH) lists the Web hosts of the results for a given query (www.staggernation.com/gawsh/). When you click on the triangle next to each host, you get a list of results for that host. The Google API Relation Browsing Outliner (GARBO) is a little more complicated: You enter a URL and choose whether you want pages that related to the URL or linked to the URL (www.staggernation.com/garbo/). Click on the triangle next to an URL to get a list of pages linked or related to that particular URL. CapeMail is an e-mail search application that allows you to send an e-mail to google@capeclear.com with the text of your query in the subject line and get the first ten results for that query back. Maybe it 's not something you 'd do every day, but if your cell phone does e-mail and doesn 't do Web browsing, this is a very handy address to know.