Fun with Google

I recently found out a load of stuff I didn’t know you could do with Google, so I thought I’d share it.

~
Put this symbol before a word and Google will use all its known synonyms for that word as well (e.g. “~help Powerpoint” will also search for “tips”, “hints” “advice” and so on).

+
Google, by default, omits various small but common words, such as “and”, “but” and “to”. Sometimes, though, you need these to narrow your search. To force Google to include them, put a + sign before the word (e.g. “War +and Peace”).

-
Conversely, to force Google to omit pages with a certain word or phrase, put a hyphen/minus before the word (e.g. “tanks ‘-think tanks’” will return pages about tanks, but not pages about think tanks).

*
To search for a phrase with an unknown word, use an asterisk in place of the missing word (e.g. “the * is mightier than the sword”).

define:
This lets you search for the definition of a word (e.g. “define:serendipity”).

filetype:
To restrict your search to a specific type of file, use “filetype:” and add the extension used for that type of file (e.g. to search for Adobe Acrobat files, use “filetype:pdf”).

intitle:
To search for words only in a page’s title, use “intitle:” (e.g. “intitle:bird watching”). Similarly, “allintitle:” will do the same, but puts the words in any order (e.g. “allintitle:bird watching” will find a page entitled “Watching wild birds”, which “intitle:” wouldn’t).

site:
This restricts your search to sites with the specified names. So “site:.uk” will restrict your search to sites whose domain ends in “.uk”. Even better, though, you can use this to search within a specific site as well – for example, “space site:.nasa.com” will search for pages with “space” in them, but only within NASA’s site.

link:
This will return pages that link to the site you specify (e.g. “link:nasa.com” will return pages that link to NASA).

&as_qdr=m#
To search only the most recent pages, append “&as_qdr=m#” to the end of your search URL, replacing the hash with a number of months (e.g. &as_qdr=m6 will return pages added to Google’s index within the past 6 months).

pax et bonum

Article posted at 3:37pm on 19 September 2005
Category: Computers, Struggling, General