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Google Searching Guide


All of us know, at least ones that bother to read stickies, that a google search is your best friend for any sort of problem. But how do you do it? Oftentimes your results are too small, not relevant enough, or every page includes something you're steering away from. This guide was made to help you search better with google.

  • The first thing you need to know is that google has various versions of itself, for whatever worldly region you're in, such as www.google.com , www.google.co.uk , www.google.co.jp , and more.

  • Oftentimes you'll run into the same keyword you don't want, such as finding free trials and free downloads of software you have to pay for, when you really want 100% free software. That's when a dash is handy. putting '-' infront of something makes google not return pages that have that, so a search for...
    Quote:
    free mp3 software -trial
    will return free mp3 software, not free trials of ones you later need to buy.

  • Google won't include periods, so a search for the game engine M.U.G.E.N. will return results for the japanese race type mugen as well. Additional characters are also ignored. These are, in no particular order, ',' ';' ':' '/' and ''.

  • A double quote is oftentimes your best friend. Encasing something in double quotes will return that exact result. Doing a search for
    Quote:
    people that pet cats
    will return results for all of those words, but a search for
    Quote:
    "people who pet cats"
    will return a search for that exact phrase, and you will find info on people who pet cats.

  • If you don't know the exact word used, you can search for synonyms with a tilde. This (~) is a tilde, the sqiggly line, and my favorite character. Putting that directly infront of a word will also search for synonyms of the word, so if you want a place that sells felines, and you search for
    Quote:
    "~cat sellers"
    you will also find people that sell felines.

  • A '*' is a wildcard. Put that in, and it'll be replaced with anything, but that's only used within quotes you were told about earlier. As an example, a search for
    Quote:
    "people that * at cats"
    will bring up everything from people that yell at cats, to people that fart at cats.

  • The pipeshift, '|', on most keyboards the upper character on the key to the left of the backspace, is used in google as an 'or' operator, meaning if you seperate two words with it, google will search for any of those words. In addition, if a pipeshift is awkward to type for you, the actual word "OR" will suffice, if it's completely capitalized. As an example, you can enter
    Quote:
    "people that feed|eat cats"
    to find people that feed cats, and people that eat cats.

  • Google can search things that are in the address itself, useful when you want a page in a certain extension without info on the extension itself, or a file named something without info on what it's named. This is done with "inurl:".
    Quote:
    inurl:corn
    will search for pages that have "corn" in the URL. Also supported by google are 'intitle:', 'intext:', and 'inanchor:', which do as they sound, searching for your phrase within the title, text, and anchor respectively. You can add 'all' to the beginning of one of these to allow you to specify multiple phrases to search for.

  • You can search for filetypes with google as well, so you can find files and not sites about files. It's simple enough, you can use "filetype:" to search like this.
    Quote:
    filetype:doc
    will search for .doc files for you.

  • Google automatically searches for various inflections of words, however with a lower priority, such as plural forms. For example, search for define, it will also find definition, however at a lower priority. Also, it provides automatic spellchecking and suggests corrected words.

  • If your search is based around a particular site, you can use 'site:' to search within a specific site. 'related:' searches for pges similar to a site you specify, and 'link:' brings results thta contai na link to the specified site.

  • Unsure of what number is included in your search? Looking for a model car that you know is between 1987 and 1990? Use a "numrange:" search. You use that, followed by the low number, two periods, and then the high number, and google will include every integer between. Let's say you wanted cats born between 2000 and 2006.
    Quote:
    cats born in numrange:2000..2006


  • Did a site you need info on just die? Look up google's cache of it! "cache:" does this. http://www.mugen-fr.com/ was a M.U.G.E.N. site that died a while ago, so I used
    Quote:
    cache:www.mugen-fr.com
    to obtain google's cached version of the site, to see how it was before it went down.

  • Need to know about a site without going there? Use "info:" to do this, of course followed by the site address, but the same functionality could be obtained by just inputting the site address itself.

  • Tidbit: searching for
    Quote:
    "***"
    apparantly brings back everything on google. XD



If anybody has anything to add, please tell me, of course I'll add it into the first post and credit you. Yes, I do intend for this to be stickied, it'd be a help for people that actually read the stickies.

Contributors:
dave the lost
Lunacide
Ophichius

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This is quite helpful! And I had no idea that Google search supported booleans like that.

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I too have learned from this guide, Rydian, and I appreciate you taking the time to compile it. I must suggest, however, that you have a moderator move this into the Tech-Talk subforum or have it added to the guides stickie (if it's still there).

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Google also recognises the OR keyword.

test | something == test OR something

* can only be used within quotes, and in fact it only makes sense when used in quotes.

Searching for a string with , or ; gives no results
Google ignores .:/\ not just .

Google automatically searches for various inflections of words, however with a lower priority e.g. plural forms.
e.g. search for define, it will also find definition, however at a lower priority.

Google supports inurl: intitle: intext: and inanchor:

related:site searches for pages similar to site

link:test searches for pages that link to test


Google Calculator:
Supports real, imaginary and complex numbers, sin, cos, tan, e, pi.

Trig functions use radians e.g. sin(pi) = 0, however degrees can be specified
tan(60 degrees)
supports brackets, ^ for exponent, ! for factorial and sqrt(number) for square root.
nth root of x determines x^(1/n) or the nth root of x
x % of y
ln - natural log, log - log base 10
% modulus, finds remainder e.g. 17%3=2

Prefix hex numbers with 0x, octal with 0o and binary numbers with 0b

in forces units e.g. 5 kilometers in miles = 3.1... miles

Currency: x curr1 in curr2
e.g. 1 USD in AUD = 1.32...

define [word] searches for define [word] normally, and also returns a definition of [word] at the top of results

define:[word] (note no space) returns list of definitions


searching for some questions will return results taken from somewhere.
By that I mean, searching for something like area of australia returns Area: 7,682,300 SQ KM at the top of results, along with the source the value was taken from.
Searching for a ticker symbol returns stock price, airline name and flight number returns flight information, address returns map, etc


site:[site] searches just site [site]


provides automatic spellchecking, suggests corrected words

weather [city] returns weather results for city [city]
Can also use zip codes or include state

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Thank god.
I have been meaning to write something like that myself for all the people on here who seem incapable of googling a question first.
Now they have no excuse!

Hallowed Lunatic

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To be honest I've been trying to teach my dad how to google properly and the best analogy is learning another language. If you can crack the language used in most searches (Google included) then you can find what you want

Great Guide

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Googles calculator is awesome. It can even find the meaning of life.

Here, Try searching this and see the amazing calculator result.

Quote:
answer to life the universe and everything =

Google-Nerd Jokes aside, here are some useful commands.

Also, don't forget the "allin" versions of inurl, intitle, etc.
The allin versions search for all terms.

Quote:
allinurl:pet store

This serach will bring back all urls that have pet and store in them.



Finding movie showtimes and reviews.
Quote:
movie: The Matrix

This search will bring back reviews for The Matrix



Finding weather.
Quote:
weather new york

This search will bring back weather for New York.



Finding phone numbers.
Quote:
phonebook: Disney CA

This search will bring back phone numbers for Disney in California.

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Nice... Most of this also works in my favourites AllTheWeb and HotBot as well as Google. Opera browser lets me put all three up as default search bar segments, as does Firefox. 'Making search more useful...'

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Rydian Morrison
Google Searching Guide


All of us know, at least ones that bother to read stickies, that a google search is your best friend for any sort of problem. But how do you do it? Oftentimes your results are too small, not relevant enough, or every page includes something you're steering away from. This guide was made to help you search better with google.

  • The first thing you need to know is that google has various versions of itself, for whatever worldly region you're in, such as www.google.com , www.google.co.uk , www.google.co.jp , and more.

  • Oftentimes you'll run into the same keyword you don't want, such as finding free trials and free downloads of software you have to pay for, when you really want 100% free software. That's when a dash is handy. putting '-' infront of something makes google not return pages that have that, so a search for...
    Quote:
    free mp3 software -trial
    will return free mp3 software, not free trials of ones you later need to buy.

  • Google won't include periods, so a search for the game engine M.U.G.E.N. will return results for the japanese race type mugen as well.

  • A double quote is oftentimes your best friend. Encasing something in double quotes will return that exact result. Doing a search for
    Quote:
    people that pet cats
    will return results for all of those words, but a search for
    Quote:
    "people who pet cats"
    will return a search for that exact phrase, and you will find info on people who pet cats.

  • If you don't know the exact word used, you can search for synonyms with a tilde. This (~) is a tilde, the sqiggly line, and my favorite character. Putting that directly infront of a word will also search for synonyms of the word, so if you want a place that sells felines, and you search for
    Quote:
    "~cat sellers"
    Quote:
    you will also find people that sell felines.

  • A '*' is a wildcard. Put that in, and it'll be replaced with anything, but that's best used within quotes you were told about earlier. As an example, a search for
    Quote:
    "people that * at cats"
    will bring up everything from people that yell at cats, to people that fart at cats.

  • The pipeshift, '|', on most keyboards the upper character on the key to the left of the backspace, is used in google as an 'or' operator, meaning if you seperate two words with it, google will search for any of those words.

  • Google can search things that are in the address itself, useful when you want a page in a certain extension without info on the extension itself, or a file named something without info on what it's named. This is done with "inurl:".
    Quote:
    inurl:corn
    will search for pages that have "corn" in the URL.

  • You can search for filetypes with google as well, so you can find files and not sites about files. It's simple enough, you can use "filetype:" to search like this.
    Quote:
    filetype:doc
    will search for .doc files for you.



If anybody has anything to add, please tell me, of course I'll add it into the first post and credit you. Yes, I do intend for this to be stickied, it'd be a help for people that actually read the stickies.


Wow! I never knew about that! Thanks for compiling this! !Very helpful!

Perfect Regular

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I've learned some things from this 3nodding Here's one I use quite often:

Quote:
music: artist

It helps me find discographies and release dates for my research 3nodding

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Nice guide, but will people actually read it, if they ignore the stickies?

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I think ? replaces a letter in any word.

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The lord has sent us an angel, and his name is Rydan Morrison. This a a sublime guide, and covers everything you need to find anything you need. I hope that people will read this, because if they do, they'll make around 80% fewer threads here.

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jironimokasumi: Yay, the first post wasn't a complaint, I feel loved.

Charley Foxtrott: Whenever I make something large like this 98% of the time it's in the wrong forum. o_<;

dave the lost: Yeah, but I figured including or and the pipeshit was rather redundant. Yes, I made sure to point out it's for use within quotes, but didn't know it can'y be used outside of quotes. o.o;
Heh, I knew I was forgetting a lot of things. XD I just remembered the ones I use.
I think I can leave the calculator out, if I go into more of google than the search I'll be here days. D:

Palmer586: I got here first. XD Hey, write a paragraph about something and I'll stick it in.

Lanackse-Kanvae: Thank you. ^^

Lunacide: Good, more stuff to stick in.

MalikTous: Heh, I think most firefox's have far more than that.

EdThaSlayer: Firstpostquoting is deadly.

MrMadman: Oh yeah, I know of more, but will wait until I can find non-illegal examples to be sued with filesearching. >_>;

zerod: This is meant for people that actually read stickies, incase thye ciome here because a google search gave them nothing, they will know how to whip google into shape for them.

Skaaa: Go try, I'll forget. XD

Draconic50: Thank you. ^^; I need to add a lot more, especialy what dave showed, and more as soon as I can get an example, I don't use half this stuff. D:

Going to edit the first post and stick all your knowledge in now. ^^

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Excelent guide- this is gonna be immortallised in my siggy forever biggrin
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