A whole lotta google tips

September 29, 2005 3:38 PM

Even though I've been using Google as a start page for the past five years, this exhaustive list of Google search tips still had loads of stuff I didn't know about.
posted by mathowie (18 comments total)

Wake me up when Google has case-sensitive search or the NEAR boolean.
posted by eschatfische at 3:43 PM on September 29, 2005

This is hardly exhaustive... where's the (extremely useful) "ext:" operator?

(still, worth a read...)
posted by pompomtom at 4:00 PM on September 29, 2005

Nice tips, some stuff I knew, some stuff I didn't know and some stuff I still don't understand but that's alright. Always happy to find new toys to play with and then break.
posted by fenriq at 4:08 PM on September 29, 2005

I always use the - connector vs quotes, as I find it easier to type sometimes, but they aren't identical. Compare "kool moe dee" vs kool-moe-dee.
Anyone know what's going on?
posted by jikel_morten at 4:42 PM on September 29, 2005

also recommended: reading of the fine manual, and/or printing out the cheat sheet.
posted by piranha at 4:45 PM on September 29, 2005

Their tip about the plus sign being unnecessary is wrong.

Searching for beef microchips yields different results than searching for +beef +microchips
posted by fnerg at 5:06 PM on September 29, 2005

Google SMS Quick Answers -- using your mobile phone -- is oh so helpful when you and friends are drunk and trying to recall the name of the author of 'To Kill A Mockingbird,' who was childhood friends with Truman Capote and helped him do research for his book "In Cold Blood."
posted by ericb at 5:09 PM on September 29, 2005

It forgot to mention that the calculator includes a conversion utility. It's great for recipes.
posted by duck at 5:14 PM on September 29, 2005

And they still haven't fixed how to search for things in Portland OR.
I always get at least one Maine entry.
grr.
posted by j at 5:29 PM on September 29, 2005

Is this a cunning plot to actually create an exhaustive list?
posted by pompomtom at 5:53 PM on September 29, 2005

Is this a cunning plot to actually create an exhaustive list?

No, Matt Drudge tried that earlier this week.
posted by ericb at 6:12 PM on September 29, 2005

I would really like the see the return of literals. When it was very young, I could search for unix things, like "sendmail -d -dB".. Whereas now, no matter how you try, that interpreted quite differently.

Interesting they do C# though. Would have been nice if they had left one of the quotation methods as raw/literal search.
posted by lundman at 7:17 PM on September 29, 2005

[movie: Me and You and Everyone We Know]
posted by rafter at 7:50 PM on September 29, 2005

[movie: Me and You and Everyone We Know 10108]
posted by rafter at 7:52 PM on September 29, 2005

GEEKS!
posted by R. Mutt at 8:17 PM on September 29, 2005

search for "where in the world is carmen sandiego?"

tho im pretty sure i saw this easter egg here
posted by Satapher at 3:34 AM on September 30, 2005

I discovered the country specific search a while ago. I found something on a Dutch message board, but my sister, from within Holland, could not get that message board as her search result at all, no matter how she searched. I suppose they tried to block search engines, but only blocked google.nl
Something to think about if you're blocking Google to search your site. (I suspect it might work the other way around as well: if you block google.com, you might still show up on .whatever, especially with delays in different Google dances)
posted by easternblot at 7:32 AM on September 30, 2005

I like this guide to using Google.
posted by blue shadows at 7:13 PM on September 30, 2005