Thread: Ways of searching the internet

I’ve heard there’s more to accurate, in-depth ways of searching the internet than a simple Google search, but I haven't been told exactly what's involved.

I’ve heard that Google has designed-in limitations.

The only refinement I know is to use double quotation marks around the search term.

Can anyone add to this?

Google is pretty handy. Here's the best I got off the top of my head.

• Using the "+" is pretty pointless, but using the "-" before a word is very handy, especially used before a quote. For example, you might write:

  Example:
  

  Innocent -"Mark Twain"

• Google searches a couple dictionaries. Just write "define:" before a word.
• To search for a word in the url, use "inurl:" or "allinurl:"
• To search within a specific site, write "site:" and then the url. You can generally leave off the "www" part and the "http://" and you can even search withing subfolders of a website by including them.

  Example:
  

  site:writingforums.com bb code inurl:faq

• If you want to only search the title of a page use "intitle:"
• If you want to search for a specific filetype, use "filetype:"

Google also has other search analysis features like Insights where you can see the popularity of different search terms mapped onto the U.S. or on the world. (I once tried putting in a bunch of racial epithets and found the majority of their searchers are from Ohio West Virginia. Guess being a swing state has its side effects.)

Search engines must have built-in limitations or they would never finish searching. I use three systems for finding what google does not find, or at least does not put in the top 100 hits. They require a bit of extra digging, but the payoff can make the effort worthwhile.

My first method uses search engines, but not just google. The easiest way to expand your search horizons is to use Dogpile, what you might call the search engines' search engine. Dogpile is many-branched and can take you many places you've never been before. But even if you stick with google, you don't have to be satisfied with what google has to offer. Go through the top 20 or 30 sites returned by google and make a list of every link listed on each site. I copy and paste them into Notebook so I can come back and copy and paste them one by one into my address bar. And of course the first layer of links will have a second layer, and that layer another layer. Many of the links you find this way will also show up in the first few pages of google or some other search engine, but many will not. I put a star beside the ones I like in the list I have, nothing beside those that might or might not be of value. The ones that are obviously useless I delete from the list.

My second way of going beyond google is to use the National Library Service periodicals section. Read all the ads and skim through the articles looking for Internet links. Most of these will probably show up on google, but a few will not, and those few are the ones you want. The more specialised the periodical, the richer will be the harvest. Any site linked to in The New Yorker will likely have a high google rating. Sites you find in such magazines as Psychology Today and Archaeology will be a bit more obscure and many of them will not be found by google. When you get to Science and Lancet you will find references that may be a hundred pages deep in google, if they are there at all. With the library there are also government and ngo publications that in themselves will be valuable references but which will contain links to often obscure sites that are rich in information.

The third method is to look for schools and libraries. Universities, of course, but even secondary schools can have good local information that can be useful. Again follow links that lead to more links.

Maybe I’ll regret opening this can of worms. It seems as if a person needs to choose between spending their day writing and spending their day researching their writing.

An eight to one ratio is what I've found to be about right, research to writing. I spend a day in the field making notes, an hour at home writing them up.

Ah, yes, but do you also factor in the time spent searching for the right word? It’s one thing to be out in the field discovering that the cat sat on the mat, another thing entirely to write that up in page-turning fashion.

Look what the cat dragged in:

The Invisible Web: Deep Web, Hidden Internet, Hard to Find Information - LibrarySpot.com Feature


http://www.ciphermysteries.com/2009/...r-of-google-fu

Comprehensive list of Search Engines - The Search Engine List

What the cat dragged in is excellent. Thoses are better resources than I have because most of what I have is http protocol. I'm not sure if the list of search engines is really comprehensive, and I'm not sure using it would be better than going through Dogpile. If you do go through Dogpile, please wipe your feet before coming back in the house. But thank you very much for the others. Finding those sites is very difficult going about searches the way I've been doing, though what I've been doing has turned up a lot of information you can't find with a simple google search. I believe what you have found will speed up the process and uncover some very valuable resources.