Google and Yahoo search tips

[Leif]

For those of you searching the Internet. You can save yourself a lot of searches if you refine your search. It can take some time to learn better search techniques but in the long run you will save a lot of time. Here are a few tips I have compiled from other places. If anybody else have some tips please post them. Enjoy Leif


You are searching what you write
Yahoo and Google will search for the words you are typing. For example will you receive hits on all documents if you type the word “soccer”. If you are typing “soccer” “Arsenal”, the search will be limited to documents with both words.

Be aware of misspelling. Even with misspelled words you can receive hits and then you might think this is correct but probably it will not be . Google do have a spellchecker which corrects some words but not all.


Use quotation marks
If you do a search for a particular phrase with words in a decided order, like “go to a movie” you have to use the quotation marks like it is written here.

If you are typing “go” “to” “a” “movie” like this, you will receive hits on all documents with those words and not necessarily in this order.

If in your search it is enough that only one word of several words shows up in the documents in your search you can use the command “OR” like this: film OR movie. You will then receive hits that either have the word “film” or the word “movie”.

If you want to search for a person it is handy to use quotation marks outside the whole name like this: “John Doe”. Then you will avoid receiving hits on all pages that has the words “John” and “Doe” but are limiting the hits to pages only with the word “John Doe” where the words are together like this.

If you wants to exclude some words you can use the minus (sign) close to the word you wants to exclude like this film –movie.


To specify searches
The easiest way to do this is to click on the advanced search link beside the search field. Here you can specify language, date and words to be excluded from the search.

If you type www.google.fr instead of www.google.com you will receive everything in French. The same goes for www.yahoo.fr


Usage of support words
In addition to elementary search tips you can also use so-called meta words, words to assist you. Both Google and Yahoo have those popular words.

If you use the meta word Site: it will allow you to do searches inside such websites which has this specified address. For example educational institution often has the ending “.edu” in English spoken countries.

If you want to search for the word “mars” inside such websites you just types mars site:.edu You can do the same on i.e. French or Italian websites as well by replacing .edu with .fr or .it.


To search for internal information on websites
If you want to refine your search even more you can in Yahoo by searching for the word “mars” inside a specified website like the webpage’s to NASA do it like this: mars hostname:www.nasa.gov In Google you do the same by using the site commando like shown here but you must change the ending and use the whole website address like this, say if you wants to search for soccer on The Independents webpage’s soccer site:www.independent.co.uk


Search on headlines
You can also find websites which have specific words in its web address. For example “digital”, if you are interested in topics of digital character. You simply types inurl:digital

If you are interested to find webpage’s with a specific word in the title you type intitle:digital


Search on document types
You can search on specific documents types like word files, excel files or powerpoint files. To do this you types in Google filetype:doc bbc.co.uk if you for example wants to search for a word document in BBC.

Filetype:xls for searching for excel documents (ppt for powerpoint and so on).


Calculator and converting
Google is both a calculator and a converting program. Type in your arithmetic problem in the search field (2+2) and you will receive your answer like a search result.

Try this: 7*9 in Google. What do you receive? Correct, the answer 63. For those of you searching the meaning of life, try this 7*6.

You can use all the mathematical signs like minus, plus, multiplication and dividing. You can also use the calculator for percentage calculations like this 45% of 100. Just check out other combinations – its pretty neat .

Google converts most anything you want. Type “2 meters in cm” and you will receive the answer “200 cm”. With this tool you can convert between most of the unit of measurements.


Currency calculator
Google has introduced silently a currency calculator which calculates money from one currency to another. Type “100 dollars in norwegian kroner” and you will receive the answer in today’s currency. How accurate this currency is we don’t know but it gives a clue .


Definitions and facts
To have words defined are neat. If you search on the word “mars”, but are interested in the origin of the word, it can be difficult to navigate in the jungle of search hits.

If you types define:mars in Google you will receive definitions of “mars” and instantly you are much closer to what you wanted. In Yahoo you type “define mars” without colon.

In Yahoo you can also use the shortcut “facts”. Try it as shown above but replace define with facts.


Special services
If you are going for a travel it can be handy with some hotel information.

In Yahoo: Type simply the city’s name cityname hotels, like this: new york hotels and you will receive a list with a selection of the city’s hotels.

This function doesn’t work so well in Google. But Google have the option travelling services which you uses by typing in two city names after each other which correspond with where you are travelling from and tom like this: london-new york


Sports results
For the sports fans. In Yahoo. Try this: team name scores.

Example: Arsenal Scores


Music
Google has also a music search. Type in the name for an artist, a record or parts of a lyric then the results from Google Music will be received. You have also a separate button which gives you the possibilities to search for music in this part of Google.

[Lewis]

Nice round up... here's some more info on searching with Google.

[JustinB]

Also, .com while used by everyone, was originally supposed to be used for commercial, whereas .gov is for (US) government.

Hence, your results will be far better searching for mars from the nasa.gov site vs the nasa.com site

-- JB

[roshni]

No tips on searching but just wanted to add two more search engines that have proven to be very helpful: "Teoma" and "Wisenut".

[LaoziSailor]

<http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=es&u=>
followed by i.e.:
<http://www.elcomercioperu.com.pe/EdicionImpresa/Html/2006-01-15/impOpinion0438724.html>

PS. I used the less than & greater than symbols so that the data would display proerly in the post.
Otherwise vBulletin would make changes to the entries on it's own.

[LaoziSailor]

[VOID] I thought I was starting a new thread [/VOID]

[Leif]

Originally Posted by JustinB

Also, .com while used by everyone, was originally supposed to be used for commercial, whereas .gov is for (US) government.

Hence, your results will be far better searching for mars from the nasa.gov site vs the nasa.com site

-- JB

Thanks, I changed it (guess I was little bit quick)