by: Andrew Wroblewski
In Part One, we covered the basics of searching on Google.com and in Part Two we moved into more advanced search techniques. In today's third installment we will peer into some ways of using Google you may have never thought of or knew existed.
DATE RANGES: You may limit your search to an exact date of a "range" of dates that a page was indexed by Google. To use Google's "daterange" function, you will need to express your dates in "Julian" dates. This date format is express as an integer. To convert a common date into Julian format go to: http://www.24hourtranslations.co.uk/dates.htm
As an example, if I wanted to find pages (about a certain topic) indexed by Google during the month of May 2003, I would type in:
"spyware removal" daterange: 2452774-2452803
TYPES OF FILES: You can limit your Google search results to specific files ending in a particular extension (.doc,.txt,.rtf,.pdf etc...)
To find a file on the topic "spyware remover" in Adobe (.pdf) format you would type in: "spyware remover" filetype:pdf
You can exclude certain types of files from your search by doing a "negative" search and placing a "minus" ( - ) sign in front of the "filetype:"
ANCHOR TEXT SEARCHES: Allow you to just search the "anchor" text in web page link anchors. Link anchors are the words that appear between: anti-spyware software In this case it's the phrase Anti-Spyware Software
PLAIN TEXT SEARCHES: By using Google's "intext" search capabilities, you can search JUST the body text of web pages and not any links, urls or titles, just the body. Simply type:
intext:"spyware remover"
CACHE SEARCHING: This form of searching will only search for results on sites that are stored in Google's "cache' or memory. This sometimes can give you older versions of sites. Example:
cache: spyware.pcwash.com
LINK SEARCHES: Want to know how many and what sites have links back to your site? Just search for your domain preceded by "link:"
link: spyware.pcwash.com
INFO SEARCHING: Find out what information Google has stored about a particular web page or site by searching:
info: spyware.pcwash.com
GOOGLE'S PHONEBOOK: Yes, Google has a phenomenal phone book database allowing you to search for both residential and business phone numbers. You may use the following search orders:
FN or FI (first name or first initial), LN (last name), city
FN (FI), LN, state
FN (FI), LN, area code
FN (FI), LN, zip code
phone # including area code (ex: 111-222-3333)
LN, city, state
LN, zip code
To find the phone number of the Whitehouse you would search:
phonebook: whitehouse washington dc
To find the phone number of the John Smith in Anytown, NY you could search:
phonebook: john smith ny
or
phonebook: smith anytown ny
or
phonebook: j smith ny
STOCK SEARCHING: Google can generate results on just about any stock because they use the stock information from the Yahoo! finance pages. For example:
stocks: ebay
Phew! Now, this list isn't even exhaustive, but it will give 99.99% of you enough information and insight to start REALLY tapping into the top ranked search engine in the world: Google.com. Go have some fun!
Did you miss one of the previous search articles? Just go to: http://spyware.pcwash.com/articles1.html