The art of googling…

Many a time my friends ask me questions which I don’t know but according to them, I should…For example last week, someone asked me the download link for a peer to peer software known as Ares. Not trying to displease her, i just launched my firefox browser, keyed in: download ares and copied the link of the first search result and gave it to her…She was delighted :p When I asked her, why she didn’t try googling for the link…She simply replied that she tried but didn’t get the link though…

The question i asked myself: Do I have a special google search engine at my place???

Well, it can’t be of course, because I only access the same search engine as other people hosted on some servers somewhere out there…

The most probable answer is surely this: Many people simply don’t know how to use search engines properly.

In this post, we will try to explore some simple things which will improve your search efficiency for google.

To start with, let’s take a close look at google’s interface.

As you can see, the search page does not consist of only a text box and a search button as it used to be in the past…Search engines have improved considerably providing us with very interesting tools ( which most of us don’t use or are simple unaware of their existence).

Just on the top of the search box, notice a few links like images, news, groups and more. This allows users to search for a specific kind of data. If you click on images for example, then key in a word, you will be provided with images having that name or image description as result. In altavista.com, you can even search for audio/mp3 and also movies.

Just below the search box, there are 2 buttons: “google search” & “I’m feeling lucky”. Most of you just click the first one without even bothering about the purpose of the second button…Well the second button, will simple take the first result that google has and open up the corresponding page for you, thus saving you a click-time

let’s try it out using the keyword uom. Key in uom, and press the “google search” button, notice that the first result is for the university of mauritius. Now open up another fresh google search page, key in uom and press the “I’m feeling lucky” button. Magic, the university of mauritius’ webpage opens

Take a look on the left of the text box, you will see 3 links, I’ll leave these for you to explore :p

What we are more interested in, is refining your search results! Here is alink where you can get examples for using some advanced search: http://www.google.mu/intl/en/help/refinesearch.html

To cut things short, let’s look at a quick list of attributes you can use in combination with your keywords to give you better results:

OPERATOR EXAMPLE		FINDS PAGES CONTAINING…
vacation hawaii		the words vacation and Hawaii .
Maui OR Hawaii		either the word Maui or the word Hawaii
“To each his own“		the exact phrase to each his own
virus –computer		the word virus but NOT the word computer
Star Wars Episode +I		This movie title, including the roman numeral I
~auto loan		loan info for both the word auto and its synonyms: truck, car, etc.
define:computer		definitions of the word computer from around the Web.
red * blue		the words red and blue separated by one or more words.
I’m Feeling Lucky		Takes you directly to first web page returned for your query.

Don’t forget to try this,type: 56 + 23 in the google search box, and press “google search”.

You can get other small but useful tips from google itself. Here’s the link:

You can get other small but useful tips from google itself. Here’s the link: http://www.google.mu/intl/en/help/cheatsheet.html

Hope you have enjoyed this quick search tutorial and that you will obtain better search results

Have a nice googling :p