Google Hacks 2Nd Edition [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

1.2. Google Web Search Basics

Whenever you search for more than one keyword at a time, a search
engine has a default strategy for handling and combining those
keywords. Can those words appear individually anywhere in a page, or
do they have to be right next to each other? Will the engine search
for both keywords or for either keyword?

1.2.1. Phrase Searches

Google defaults to searching for occurrences of your specified
keywords anywhere in the page, whether side-by-side or scattered
throughout. To return results of pages containing specifically
ordered words, enclose them in quotes, turning your keyword search
into a phrase search , to use Google's
terminology.

On entering a search for the keywords:

to be or not to be Google will find matches where the keywords appear anywhere on the
page. If you want Google to find you matches where the keywords
appear together as a phrase, surround them with quotes, like this:

"to be or not to be" Google will return matches only where those words appear together
(not to mention explicitly including stop words such as
"to" and
"or"; see the section
"Explicit Inclusion" a little
later).

Phrase searches are also useful when you want to find a phrase but
aren't quite sure of the exact wording. This is
accomplished in combination with wildcards, explained later in the
chapter in "Full-Word Wildcards."

1.2.2. Basic Boolean

Whether an engine searches for all keywords or any of them depends on
what is called its Boolean
default .
Search engines can default to Boolean 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.

Google's
Boolean
default is 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:

snowblower Honda "Green Bay" Google will search for all the words.
If
you prefer to specify that any one word or phrase is acceptable, put
an OR between each:

snowblower OR snowmobile OR "Green Bay"

Make sure you capitalize the OR; a lowercase or won't work correctly.

If you particularly want one term along with one of two or more other
terms, group them with parentheses, like so:

snowblower (snowmobile OR "Green Bay") This query searches for the word
"snowmobile" or phrase
"Green Bay" along with the word
"snowblower." A stand-in for
OR, borrowed from the computer programming realm,
is the | (pipe) character, as in:

snowblower (snowmobile | "Green Bay")

1.2.3. Negation

If you want to specify that a query item must
not appear in your results, prepend a -
(minus sign or
dash):

snowblower snowmobile -"Green Bay" This will search for pages that contain both the words
"snowblower"
and
"snowmobile," but
not the phrase "Green
Bay." Note that the - symbol must appear directly before the word or phrase
that you don't want. If there's
space between, as in the following query, it won't
work as expected:

snowblower snowmobile - "Green Bay" Do be sure, however, that there's a space
before the - symbol.

1.2.4. Explicit Inclusion

On the whole, Google will search for all the keywords and
phrases that you specify (with the exception of those
you've specifically negated with -, of course).
However, there are certain words that Google will ignore because they
are considered too common to be of any use in the search. These
words"I,"
"a,"
"the," and
"of," to name a feware
called stop words .

You can force Google to take a stop word into account by prepending a
+ (plus) character, as in:

+the king Stop words that appear inside of phrase searches are not ignored.
Searching for:

"the move" glam will result in a more accurate list of matches than:

the move glam simply because Google takes the word
"the" into account in the first
example but ignores it in the second.

1.2.5. Synonyms

Every so often you get the feeling that you're
missing out on some useful results because the keyword or keywords
you've chosen aren't the only way
to express what you're looking for.

The Google synonym operator, the ~
(tilde)
character, prepended to any number of keywords in your query, asks
Google to include not only exact matches, but also what it thinks are
synonyms for each of the keywords. Searching for:

~ape turns up results for monkey, gorilla, chimpanzee, and others (both
singular and plural forms) of the ape or related family as if
you'd searched for:

monkey gorilla chimpanzee and some you'd never have thought to include in your
query.

Google figures out synonyms algorithmically, so you may well be
surprised to find results around words that your garden-variety
thesaurus would not have suggested. (Synonyms are bolded along with
exact keyword matches on the results page, so
they're easy to spot.)

1.2.6. Number Range

One of the more difficult things to convey in an Internet search
query is a rangeof dates, currency, size, weight, height, or
any two arbitrary values.

The number range operator,
.. (two periods), looks for results falling inside
your specified numeric range.

Looking for that perfect pair of Prada pumps, size 5 or 6? Try this
for size:

prada pumps size 5..6 Perhaps you're looking to spend $800 to $1,000 on a
nice digital SLR camera; Google for:

slr digital camera 3..5 megapixel $800..1000 The one thing to remember is always to provide some clue as to the
meaning of the range, e.g., $,
size, megapixel,
kg, and so forth.

You can also use the number range syntax with just one number, making
it the minimum or maximum of your query. Do you want to find some
land in Montana that's at least 500 acres? No
problem:

acres Montana land 500..

On the other hand, you may want to make sure that raincoat you buy
for your terrier doesn't cost more than $30.
That's possible too:

raincoat dog ..$30

Google normally does not recognize special characters like $ in the process of searching. But because the $ sign was necessary for the number feature, you can use it in all sorts of searches. Try the search "yard sale" bargains 10 and then "yard sale" bargains $10. Notice how the second search gives you far fewer results? That's because Google is matching $10 exactly.

1.2.7. Simple Searching and Feeling Lucky

The I'm Feeling
Lucky© button is a thing of beauty. Rather than
giving you a list of search results from which to choose,
you're whisked away to what Google believes is the
most relevant page given your search (i.e., the first result in the
list). Entering washington post
and clicking the I'm Feeling Lucky button takes you
directly to http://www.washingtonpost.com. Trying
president will land you at http://www.whitehouse.gov.

1.2.8. Case Sensitivity

Some search engines are case sensitive; that is, they search
for queries based on how the queries are capitalized. A search for
"GEORGE WASHINGTON" on such a
search engine would not find "George
Washington," "george
washington," or any other case combination.

Google is case insensitive. If you search for
Three, three,
ThrEE, even ThrEE, you get the
same results.