Hi finler~
First, please let me offer some general tips. Then I?ll discuss your recent search.
There are a number of things you can do to make your Internet searches
more productive:
1. Don't be afraid to be specific. If you want to learn why the sky is
blue, first try this search:
why is the sky blue
Really. It works.
But you can get even more specific. Let?s say you want to find a
certain phrase or name?like Fanny Brice or the Lucky Theatre in
Soquel, California. Then be sure to put that name in quotation marks:
?Fanny Brice?
or
?Lucky Theatre? Soquel California
2. If you're looking for information on, say, Louis Comfort Tiffany,
the famous stained glass maker, but you want to elimination any
information on his lamps, use a minus sign:
?Louis Comfort Tiffany? -lamps
3. Use asterisks to pull up information on words that could be either
plural or singular. For example, maybe you want reviews for Mel
Gibson?s ?The Passion.? You might type:
?The Passion? review*
This will bring up websites that use both the word review and reviews.
It?s also helpful when you?re not sure if a word is possessive or not.
4. Tell the search engine to included or excluded specific websites
from a search. For example, maybe you want to see everything the
Better Homes & Gardens website has to say about planting bulbs:
plant* bulbs site:bhg.com
5. Use a plus sign if you want pages with ALL the words in your
search, not just some:
+Christmas +Stocking* +Stuffer*
6. Use caches. When researching, click on Google?s cached version of
the website in question. Your search terms will automatically be
highlighted, so you don?t have to read the whole page to find out if
the site is relevant. Cached sites are also handy when the page you?re
looking is no longer on the current website.
7. Use ?Find Similar Pages.? This handy Google feature (found on the
Google search results page) allows you to quickly find sites similar
to another you?ve already discovered.
8. Use ?Search Within Results,? after you?ve performed a search.
9. Use URL searches. Here's an explanation:
"This is very similar to performing a site search...Google's advanced
search page uses the allinurl command for finding URLs that contain
certain words...However, it is the undocumented "inurl" command that
you should use, if you want to find both web pages with words in the
URL and within the pages themselves. For example, let's say you want
to find PDF files about mars exploration. Entering "mars exploration"
isn't enough, because that could bring back both HTML and PDF pages.
To solve this, you can use the inurl command to specify that URLs must
have the word "pdf" in them, which will increase the chances of
getting PDF files. Here's both commands, combined: mars exploration
inurl:pdf If you used the "allinurl" command rather than the "inurl"
command, this search wouldn't work. By the way, the "allinurl" command
takes its name because when using it, you are requiring that ALL the
words appear IN the URL. In contrast, the inurl command means that ANY
of the words you specify should appear. Google also has a command that
lets you narrow your search to find documents in particular formats,
such works better than forcing the URL command into this role. The
command is filetype:, and you follow it with the extension you want to
search for. For instance: california power crisis filetype:pdf brings
back PDF files that contain the words "california power crisis." In
contrast: california power crisis filetype:asp brings back Microsoft
Active Server Pages (ASP) files, while california power crisis
filetype:html brings back ordinary HTML files that end in .html, that
contain the words. It will not bring back HTML files the end in .htm,
however." ("Power Searching For Anyone," by Danny Sullivan, Editor,
Search Engine Watch,
http://searchenginewatch.com/facts/powersearch.html )
For additional searching tips, visit ?Power Searching For Anyone? by
Search Engine Watch:
http://searchenginewatch.com/facts/powersearch.html
Now, let?s talk about the specific search you mentioned in your
question. If I were searching for review on Forsyth?s ?Avenger,?
here?s what I?d try:
review* Avenger "Frederick Forsyth"
The first two results are Amazon.com listings, but there are several
true reviews, too:
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=review*+Avenger+%22Frederick+Forsyth%22
The search consists of using an asterisk, so that variations (like the
plural of review) will show up, the title of the book (without the
unnecessary ?the?), and the author?s name in quotation marks.
If I were looking for interviews with Forsyth?-but not necessarily
about his book ?Avenger,??I?d search:
"Frederick Forsyth" interview*
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=%22Frederick+Forsyth%22+interview*
If I wanted to see if a specific publication?let?s say the New York
Times?covered any of the author?s books:
"Frederick Forsyth" site:nytimes.com
://www.google.com/search?as_q=&num=10&hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&btnG=Google+Search&as_epq=Frederick+Forsyth+&as_oq=&as_eq=&lr=&as_ft=i&as_filetype=&as_qdr=all&as_occt=any&as_dt=i&as_sitesearch=nytimes.com&safe=images
Hope this helps!
kriswrite
Keywords Used:
tips searching internet
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=tips+searching+internet |
