Google Hacks 2Nd Edition [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Hack 14. Cover Your Bases

Try all possible combinations of your search
keywords at once .

You've got a set of

query words but are not sure
that they're the right set; you certainly
don't want to miss any results by picking the wrong
combination of keywords, including or excluding the wrong word. But
the thought of typing in a dozen-plus permutations of keywords has
your carpal tunnel flaring up in horror.

Search
Grid (http://blog.outer-court.com/search-grid) lets
you explore a wide range of Google search results by automatically
searching for the various possible combinations of your keywords.

There are two versions of Search Grid. The older version features a
grid that you fill with search words that you want to combine. You
might, for example, put catsup, mustard, and pickles on the x-axis
and relish, onions, and tomatoes on the y-axis, as shown in Figure 1-25.

Search Grid combines the resultsrelish catsup, relish mustard,
relish pickles, onions catsup, onions mustard, onions pickles,
etc.and provides you with the first result of each possible
combination, shown in Figure 1-26.

Note that you're not getting anything but the first
result; this is not the tool to use if you want a very in-depth
search of each query. Instead, it's meant to give
you a bird's-eye view of the
how the different combinations of search words impact the query.

There's a new version of Search Grid
that's been integrated into a web tool called
FindForward (http://www.findforward.com/?t=grid), which
gives you screenshots of some Google search results. That one
requires less typing. Just enter two to five words for which you want
to check possible permutations. You'll get a large
grid of search results, with screenshots available for some of the
pages, as shown in Figure 1-27.

Note that this grid will search each of your keywords individually
(one square for mustard, one for pickles, one for relish) and will
search every possible combination of two words (pickles relish,
pickles mustard, mustard relish, etc.), but it won't
search for three- and four-word permutations. In other words, this
tool won't find every single last possible
permutation of your search. Again, it's an
overview that gives you an idea of how different
word combinations can affect your search, and it is not meant to be
exhaustive.

Use this hack when you want to get a sense of how different queries
are going to affect your search, when you're not
sure about what set of search words will work best for you, and when
you want to experiment with expanding your search without having to
type several sets of keywords over and over again.

1.26.1. See Also

It's hard to believe, but when it comes to building
queries, word order matters. If you're interested in
permuting just one query at a time, see [Hack #28] .