Google Secrets

Google is clearly the best general-purpose search engine on the Web. 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 a 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.

1. 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 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:” White Elephant ”) 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.

Try using the site: (which restricts results to top-level domains) with intitle: to find certain types of pages.
For example, get scholarly pages about Shashi Tharoor by searching for intitle:”Shashi Tharoor”site:edu. Experiment with mixing various elements; you’ll develop several strategies for finding the stuff you want more effectively. The site: command is very helpful as an alternative to the mediocre search engines built into many sites.

2. Swiss Army Google
Google has a number of services that can help you accomplish tasks you may never have thought to use Google for.
For example, the new calculator feature (www.google.com/help/features.html#calculator)

lets you do both math and a variety of conversions from the search box. For extra fun, try the query “Answer to life the universe and everything.”

Let Google help you figure out whether you’ve got the right spelling — and the right word — for your search. Enter a misspelled word or phrase into the query box (try “thre blund mise”) and Google may suggest a proper spelling.
This doesn’t always succeed; it works best when the word you’re searching for can be found in a dictionary. Once you search for a properly spelled word, look at the results page, which repeats your query. (If you’re searching for “three blind mice,” underneath the search window will appear a statement such as Searched the web for “three blind mice.”) You’ll discover that you can click on each word in your search phrase and get a definition from a dictionary.

Suppose you want to contact someone and don’t have his phone number handy. Google can help you with that, too.
Just enter a name, city, and state. (The city is optional, but you must enter a state.) If a phone number matches the listing, you’ll see it at the top of the search results along with a map link to the address. If you’d rather restrict your results, use rphonebook: for residential listings or bphonebook: for business listings. If you’d rather use a search form for business phone listings, try Yellow Search
(www.buzztoolbox.com/google/yellowsearch.shtml).

3. Extended Googling
Google offers several services that give you a head start in focusing your search. Google Groups (http://groups.google.com) indexes literally millions of messages from decades of discussion on Usenet. Google even helps you with your shopping via two tools: Froogle

CODE (http://froogle.google.com)(now Google Shopping ), which indexes products from online stores.

4. Google Alert (https://www.google.com/alerts)
Monitors your search terms and e-mails you information about new additions to Google’s Web index. (Google Alert is not affiliated with Google; it uses Google’s Web services API to perform its searches.)

Online Extra: More Google Tips
Here are a few more clever ways to tweak your Google searches.

Search Within a Timeframe

Daterange: (start date–end date). You can restrict your searches to pages that were indexed within a certain time period.
Daterange: searches by when Google indexed a page, not when the page itself was created. This operator can help you ensure that results will have fresh content (by using recent dates), or you can use it to avoid a topic’s current-news blizzard and concentrate only on older results.
Daterange: is actually more useful if you go elsewhere to take advantage of it.

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