Google Advanced For Dummies
Posted by Kushan | Posted in | Posted on 9:32 PM
Enough with the history of Technoaspire, we are now beginning the For Dummies series on this blog. A series of non-intimidating, easy to understand guides to help you in our competitions and sometimes even make your life better(no kidding!)
Although the purpose of writing this post is to enable the Google Hunt participants save every tiny second during Googling, the tips given here are ever effective and might make you a Power Googler.
FYI – [ ] are used to denote search queries and can be omitted while searching.
Search for a phrase – When “” is put around a search query, the search engine searches for the exact phrase without any change in the order of words. But the mere fact that the words are together is a very strong reason not to put quotes around them. For eg. Try searching for [Sachin Tendulkar] once with the quotes and once without them and notice the differences in the search results. By putting “”, you might be missing out on some really good search results. Moral – Handle “” with caution.
Terms to be excluded – A term can be excluded from the search results by placing a – before the term. For eg. Searching for [Windows –os] will give you results only related to windows. Results pertaining to the OS would not appear. Remember not to include a space between – and os. Multiple search terms may be excluded by using – before each term to be ignored.
Wildcard – Putting a wildcard (*) after a search query instructs Google to treat it as a placeholder and then search for the best matching results. Try searching for [Microsoft *] and observe the search results. This is a very powerful feature when used. Search for [Loksabha vote * on the * bill] and you will get a list of search results containing info about every recent bill the Loksabha voted on.
Usually trivial words like “a”, “for”, “the” are omitted from searches since they do not add much to the semantic context. But there are certain exceptions to this rule. For eg. Searching for [the who] will give results pertaining to the band while searching for [who] will give links to the World Health Organisation
Here’s an interesting Easter egg - Try searching for the following words individually [anagram], [ascii art] and [recursion].
When you search for [anagram] Google will display “Did you mean “nagaram” ?” ! (Both nagaram and anagram are anagrams)
Search for [ascii art] and the Google Logo will change into an ASCII Art Logo
Search for [recursion] and Google will display “Did you mean “recursion”?” and when you click on this hyperlink you will be redirected back to the same page, thereby creating a recursive link in itself!
Until next time Happy Googling, folks!
Comments (0)
Post a Comment