Cover | Table of Contents | Colophon
to be or not to be
"to be or not to be"
to be or not to be
"to be or not to be"
AND
(searching for all keywords) or
Boolean
OR (searching for any keywords). Of course, even
if a search engine defaults to searching for all keywords, you can
usually give it a special command to instruct it to search for any
keyword. Lacking specific instructions, the engine falls back on its
default setting.AND, which means that, if you enter
query words without modifiers, Google will search for all of your
query words. For example, if you search for:* (asterisk) but sometimes
? (question mark)—to part of your query,
requesting the search engine return variants of that query using the
wildcard as a placeholder for the rest of the word at hand. For
example, moon* would find moons, moonlight,
moonshot, etc.dietary will yield
results for diet, diets, and other variations on the theme.*) into a phrase and have the
wildcard act as a substitute for one full word. Searching for
"three
*
mice", therefore, finds three blind mice, three
blue mice, three green mice, etc.* is a stand-in
for one word; two * signifies two words, and so
on. The full-word wildcard comes in handy in the following
situations:Fourscore and seven years ago, our
fathers brought forth on this continent into Google will
search only as far as the word
"on"; everything thereafter is
summarily ignored by Google.intitle:"methinks
the
*
doth
protest
too
much" and intitle:
"the
*
of
Seville" (intitle: is described
later in "Special Syntax")."protest too much methinks"
"doth protest too much"
quote
origin
English
usage and
you're stepping beyond the 10-word limit. One
solution is described next.AND,
OR, and phrase searches, Google offers some rather
extensive special syntax for narrowing your searches.intitle:intitle: restricts your
search to the titles of web pages. The variation
allintitle: finds pages
wherein all the words specified appear in the title of the web page.
Using allintitle: is basically the same as using
the intitle: before each keyword.intitle:"george bush" allintitle:"money supply" economics
allintitle: variation,
because it doesn't mix well with some of the other
syntax elements.intext:intext: searches only
body text (i.e., ignores link text, URLs, and titles). While its uses
are limited, it's perfect for finding query words
that might be too common in URLs or link titles.intext:"yahoo.com" intext:html
site:ucla.edu -inurl:ucla
site:com site:edu
perl
site:edu
site:com. This search
will get you exactly zero results. Why? Because a result page cannot
come from a .edu domain and a
.com domain at the same time. If you want
results from .edu and .com
domains only, rephrase your search like this:perl (site:edu | site:com)
|),
you're specifying that you want results to come
either from the .edu or the
.com domain.allinurl: or
allintitle: when mixing syntax. It takes a careful
hand not to misuse these in a mixed search. Instead, stick to
inurl: or intitle:. If you
don't put http://www.google.com/advanced_search?hl=en),
shown in Figure 1-1, provides more options, such as
date search and filtering, with "fill in the
blank" searching options for those who
don't take naturally to memorizing special syntax.
AND by
default,
it's sometimes
hard to logically build out the nuances of a particular query. Using
the text boxes at the top of the Advanced Search page, you can
specify words that must appear—exact
phrases, lists of words, at least one of which must appear—and
words to be excluded.filetype: special syntax described earlier in
"Special Syntax."daterange: special syntax, which can give
you results as narrow as one day, but Google stands behind the
results generated using the Date option on the Advanced Search, while
not officially sanctioning the use of the
define
(e.g., define happy) and the first item on your
results page will in all probability be a definition pulled from one
of any number of Web dictionaries. Use define:
(note the colon—e.g., define:osteichthyes)
and you'll pull up a whole page full of definitions
[Hack #10]
.http://www.google.com/language_tools?hl=en.flowers.
pinwheel
flowers, Google
wouldn't present the flowers category.three
blind
mice. The URL of the page
of results will vary depending on the preferences
you've set, but it will look something like this:http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&q=%22three+blind+mice%22
q=%22three+blind+mice%22,
%22 being a URL-encoded "
(double quote)—is pretty obvious, but let's
break down what those extra bits mean.num=100 refers to the number of search results
to a page: 100 in this case. Google accepts any number from 1 to 100.
Altering the value of num is a nice shortcut to
altering the preferred size of your result set without having to
meander over to the Advanced Search page and rerun your search.num= in your URL?
Simply append it by clicking at the end of the URL in your
browser's address bar and typing it in. To set the
number of results per page to 20, for instance,
you'd add &num=20.= (equals)—to something within the accepted
range for the modifier in question. If you're adding
a modifier, you'll need to use an
& symbol (ampersand) too. Look at how the
modifiers are joined together on URLs for other search results to see
how it's done.hl=en means the language interface—the
language in which you use Google, reflected in the home page,
messages, and buttons—is in English. Google's
Language Tools ["Language Tools"
earlier in this chapter] page provides a list of language choices.
Run your mouse over each language choice and notice the change
reflected in the URL; the URL for Pig Latin looks like this:http://directory.google.com. Instead of
indexing the entirety of billions of pages, the directory describes
sites instead, indexing about 1.5 million URLs. This makes it a much
better search for general topics.http://dmoz.org/. The collection of URLs at
the Open Directory Project is gathered and maintained by a group of
volunteers, but Google does add some of its own Googlish magic to it.
define:zeitgeist), there's
consensus that it refers to "the spirit of the
times." And Google Zeitgeist (http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html)
is just that: a mirror that the Web (according to Google) holds up to
us, providing a snapshot of the week, month, or year that
was.
http://www.touchgraph.com/TGGoogleBrowser.html).
This Java applet allows you to start with the pages that are similar
to one URL, and then expand outward to pages that are similar to the
first set of pages, on and on, until you have a giant map of
nodes (a.k.a. URLs) on your screen.http://www.touchgraph.com/).
link: syntax. You're searching by
Google's measure of similarity.
hydrecefallus, Google will ask if you meant
hydrocephalus, as shown in Figure 1-16.
hydrecefallus finding (hopefully) no results will
spark a Google-initiated search for hydrocephalus.spodding
oil texas turns up
only 4 results, while the same search with correct spelling
("spudding"), phonebook
rphonebook
bphonebook
phonebook: lookups lists only
five results, residential and business combined. The more specific
rphonebook: and bphonebook:
searches provide up to 30 results per page. For a better chance of
finding what you're looking for, use the appropriate
targeted lookup.phonebook:smith ca
scooters san
francisco, you would notice a set of local San Francisco
finds ["Quick Links" earlier in
this chapter] at the top of the results page. As you can see in Figure 1-18, Google also provides addresses, phone
numbers, and mileage (from the center of San Francisco, presumably).
http://local.google.com), a
location-aware frontend to the Google search engine. The Google Local
home page (Figure 1-19) looks very much like what
you're used to from Google, the only real difference
being that there are two search boxes instead of just the one: What
and Where. In the What box, you type your search query as usual. In
the Where box, you can localize your search by providing a city (by
itself, if the city is unambiguously well-known—e.g., San
Francisco or New York, not Rome or Concord) and a state name or Zip
Code.stocks:. Searching for
stocks:symbol, where
symbol represents the stock
you're looking for, will redirect you to
Yahoo! Finance (http://finance.yahoo.com/) for details. The
Yahoo! page is actually framed by Google; off to the top-left is the
Google logo, along with links to Quicken, Fool.com, MSN MoneyCentral,
and other financial sites.stock: query and
you'll still find yourself at Yahoo! Finance,
usually staring at a quote for stock that you've
never heard of or a "Stock Not
Found" page. Of course, you can use this to your
advantage. Enter stocks: followed by the name of a
company you're looking for (e.g.,
stocks:friendly). If the
company's name is more than one word, choose the
most unique word. Run your query and you'll arrive
at the Yahoo! Finance stock lookup page shown in Figure 1-22.
http://finance.yahoo.com) to quickly look up
stocks by symbol or company name. There you'll find
all the basics: quotes, company profiles, charts, and recent news.
For more in-depth coverage, I heartily recommend
Hoovers (http://www.hoovers.com). Some of the
information is free. For more depth, you'll have to
pay a subscription fee.http://www.dictionary.com). Such definitions,
coming from a credible source and augmented by various specialty
indexes, can be more limited.jolly
roger" will allow you to
look up the phrase "jolly roger."
On the other hand, the phrase "computer
legal" will allow you to look up the separate
words "computer" and
"legal."http://www.onelook.com/), which indexes over
six million words from over 1,000 dictionaries. If that
doesn't work, try Google again with one of the
following tricks, queryword being the word
you want to find:storyboard stet SAU, you'll get
only a few search results, and they'll all be
glossaries.glossary,
say, stet glossary. Be sure to use an unusual
word; you may not know what a
"spread" is in the context of
marketing but searching for define search syntax mentioned in the
"Quick Links" section earlier in
this chapter. Simply prepend the definition you're
after with the special syntax keyword define, like
so:define google define julienne define 42
define: (note the addition of a colon) in the
first place, and you'll net a full page of
definitions drawn from all manner of places. For instance,
define:TLA finds turns up oodles of definitions
(all about the same, mind you), as shown in Figure 1-24.
NYTimes.com might be to
simply use site:nytimes.com in your Google query.
For example, if I wanted to find articles on George Bush, why not
use:"george bush" site:nytimes.com
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
Copyright * The New York Times Company
* characters). The resultant query looks
something like this:intitle:"directory * * trees"
intitle: and keywords, like
so:botany intitle:"directory of"
edu site specification brings you to:botany intitle:"directory of" site:edu
cars intitle:"encyclopedia of"
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/essblogging/)
has arisen: an online site keeps a running commentary and associated
links, updated daily—and indeed, even more often in many cases.
Google indexes many of these sites on an accelerated schedule. If you
know how to find them, you can build a query that searches just these
sites for recent commentary.http://www.movabletype.org, or
Radio Userland, http://radio.userland.com) or as web services
(such as
Blogger, http://www.blogger.com/). These programs and
services are more easily found online with some clever use of special
syntaxes or magic words.site: syntax makes things
easy. Blogger weblogs hosted at
blog*spot (http://www.blogspot.com) can be found using
site:blogspot.com. Even though Radio Userland is a
software program able to post its weblogs to any web server, you can
find the majority of Radio Userland weblogs at the Radio Userland
community server (http://radio.weblogs.com) using
site:radio.weblogs.com.