I say that because I have been called that before. I always tell people that I do not have all the answers but I have mad searching skills.
I was helping a person with an issue they were having with a piece of software that for some reason did not like the new printer they bought. Everything else printed fine and doing things like updating drivers and uninstalling and reinstalling the printer did not help. Using a search engine I used the symptoms and had an answer within minutes. The user I helped asked me how I know all this stuff and I said that I didn't, I just searched for an answer. They replied that I must teach them my ninja like search skills.
Search Ninja: You're doing it wrong.
Caveat: The information in this post is a lot to take in if you have never performed advanced searches in Google, so please be patient and don’t treat this post as a “read once and done” deal! You may well get confused, so please ask questions via the comments if you do and I will be happy to clarify what I can for you. Don’t worry about feeling stupid, either. I truly want you to understand this stuff since I know how much it will enhance your search experience! Make sure you click on all the examples I’ve provided throughout the article as they will really help you visualize much of the information I discuss — especially if what you’re reading becomes confusing. Seeing it really can make it “click” for you. Take this post in bits and pieces if you need to, add it to your favorites, etc. but just remember to be patient, keep an open mind, experiment on your own, and most of all, HAVE FUN!
Now, before we proceed, I want to give you a scenario to consider. I will use this as the series-wide example for you to reference for all points to come. With that said, let’s say you’re interested in C++ programming. You type “C++ programming” and a couple of similar queries into Google but you’re just not satisfied with the results you’ve looked at. It’s not Google’s fault, because they do seem to be returning extremely relevant results, but they’re just not the ones you feel cater to your method of learning. So, you think to yourself, “I know I should probably just take a class or buy a book, but I really wish there was a way to find “Introduction to C++” presentations/documents from colleges online.” Well, if you were a search ninja, you would realize the cornucopia of results surely awaiting you for such a query, and as such, your initial query on that train of thought may look something like this:
site:edu intitle:Introduction intitle:C++ filetype:ppt | filetype:pdf | filetype:doc
Now, just what does that query tell Google? My fellow search ninjas out there know the answer to this, but this series isn’t catered to them, so let’s break it down! I’ll delve into the site:, intitle:, filetype:, AND and OR operators, and more. A very critical point to remember is that your search terms should be placed directly after the operator with no spaces. For example, site:edu funny is correct where site: edu funny is not. All the same, intitle:funny is correct where intitle: funny is not. Of additional note is that Google operators are case-sensitive but your search terms are not! siTe:edu funny will not work where site:edU fUnnY and site:edu funny will work one-in-the-same. Lastly, the order in which you specify your search terms doesn’t matter. For example, site:edu funny will work exactly the same as funny site:edu (you may see a different total number of results, but if you actually clicked through every single page of results, they would match and they would both end at exactly the same total number of results).
” (Quotes)
Keeping this section “short ‘n sweet,” the usage of quotes tells Google that you want it to return results for your *exact* search term. This applies to using 2 or more separate words/letters/numbers. For instance, searching for Windows 7 is different than searching for “Windows 7″ in that the first example will return results that could include the number 7 and the word “Windows” *anywhere* within a page and not necessarily grouped together. The second example, however, will return results that contain Windows 7 as an *exact* phrase. Google does a great job of guessing what you’re searching for with or without quotes most of the time, but certainly not all of the time — especially if you’re searching for an exact phrase that includes a word like “the” which Google has a tendency to ignore. For instance, if you’re searching for lyrics that contain the following phrase, the cat on the fence will yield drastically different results than “the cat on the fence” will. Get to know the usage of quotes if you don’t already, because I use them frequently throughout the examples here (and you’ll really start to understand why if you don’t already)!
AND and OR
The AND and OR operators can be incredibly useful in your search endeavors. Perhaps confusing at first, I urge you to give these operators some time to marinate. I promise you they will “click” for you and you’ll be happy you stuck it out! To discuss these two operators, I’ll break them down individually.
AND: This operator tells Google “I only want to see results that contain all of what I’m searching for.” For example, doing a search for cats dogs has the potential to return results about only cats, only dogs, or cats and dogs. If you want to see to it that you see only results including cats and dogs, your search query would be (you guessed it) cats AND dogs. This really comes in handy if you are interested in finding pages that contain multiple search terms, like cats AND dogs AND birds AND lizards. It’s also great for building up searches using qualifiers like “beginner,” “introduction,” etc. For example, Introduction AND C++ AND Beginner. Of all the operators I use, I use AND the least by far. But if I’m going to discuss OR (which is next), then I couldn’t negate AND!
OR: What this operator does is tell Google “I only want to see results based on what I specify, but not results that have to contain all of what I specify.” For example, if you do a search for “Search Engines” OR C++, what you’ll get are results that are about either search engines or C++. It’s entirely possible that a result from that search could contain both C++ and search engines in the same article, but that would be a coincidence! Remember, if you wanted to see only results that must contain both search engines and C++, you would use the AND operator like so: “Search Engines” AND C++.
Now, it’s very important to note that OR is interchangeable with |. That means you can use either one to achieve the same end result. For example, “Search Engines” | C++ is the same as “Search Engines” OR C++. Personally, I like to use | because it lets Google know beyond the shadow of a doubt that I mean OR in terms of an operator and not a word. For instance, what if I did a search for “Search Engine” ORC? Did I mean “Search Engine” OR C as in a search engine OR a programming language named C, or did I mean “Search Engine” ORC as in a search engine fantasy creature?
Because spaces don’t matter with the OR operator, “Search Engine”|C is the same as “Search Engine” | C is the same as “Search Engine” |C is the same as “Search Engine”| C. Now, try all four (1 2 3 4) of those using OR instead of | and you will get two sets of very different results!
Lastly, it’s important to note that you can have multiple OR operators in one search query. This can be really helpful if searching for multiple qualifiers to give you more results to go through without having to type individual queries. Take, for instance, a scenario where a product goes by multiple names. Let’s say I want to search for Windows 7-related stuff. Well, I may want to cover as many bases as I can and try something like “Windows 7″ | “Win 7″ | “Windows Seven” | “Win Seven”.
site:
Without getting all convoluted and intricate here, the site: operator basically tells Google “I want you to only show me results from specific Web sites or domains I specify.” So, to give you an example using just this operator, site:edu “Search Engines” would tell Google that you want to see results about “Search Engines” from .edu domains only. Getting even more specific, you could try something like site:harvard.edu “Search Engines” to see results about “Search Engines” from only the harvard.edu Web site!
As you can see, just the site: operator alone can help to greatly filter and fine-tune your results, but don’t let the edu examples above pigeonhole your creativity and thought process. If you’re looking for Windows 7 Service Pack 1-related material and you want to see only what’s on Microsoft’s site, you could try site:microsoft.com “Windows 7 Service Pack 1″ and BOOM, highly-relevant, fine-tuned results!
Yellow Belt Search Ninja Exercise: Think of a topic you’re interested in and try to think of a couple of sites you feel would contain the most helpful/insightful information based on that topic. Now, create one search query based on your topic that will show results from both of the sites you thought of and only those two sites. Hint: Remember the | operator!
On the next page, I discuss the filetype: and intitle: operators, as well as the solution to the opening example and the conclusion of part 1.
It's kind of amazing how search becomes an extension of your brain. You're not forced to really *know* anything in particular, because more than likely, when a question comes up, you're just a search away from an answer!
