How do YOU search google?

[Anthony]

I find it hard to belive that people cant come up with things to put in the OT forums that actually have some meaning to something so here is my attempt

How do YOU search google? I limited it to google because most people use it anyways and search engines can vary. Well we all know (or most of us anyways) the basics of using google (the use of AND, NOT, OR and such).

So is my "special" technique: When I want to know the title to a song I do not know I will use the quotes around a lyric from the song as follows (so my taste in music is coming though no comments lol):

"He was a boy she was a girl"

Most people will know that this song is "Sk8er Boi" (or Skater Boy) with either a frown or a smile. It does work as you can see here

Maybe we can add on to this and all become better google users

[Anthony]

Another neat feature of google:

You cant spell something and you dont have word (or dont feel like opening it)? Go to google and type the word you dont know how to spell. Google will then say "Did you mean:" in red and then the word it thinks you wanted.

I tried this with the word politicaly (thats the misspelling....)

My result was this here

[Dice599]

I use yahoo. Don't ask me why but I do and it runs off the google search engine anyway so it doesnt really matter...I typed 'politicaly' too and got the same results here

[Anthony]

Oh... but does yahoo have the built in Dictionary.com support? I actually used Yahoo until they started using google. Less of a mess on google.

[Dice599]

I dont know what the dictionary.com support is? And yes, yahoo is a little more cluttered but I use it out of habit.

[Anthony]

I wont explaine this right... so I wont try... here is what google says here

The dictionary results are underlined in the blue bar (google didnt really explaine this very well now that I look).

[Dice599]

That is a feature I was unaware of, but no I don't think Yahoo has that. I checked and couldn't find anything about it. Maybe I'll have to break my habit and switch.

[punkster103]

you just can't beat google!

[Matt]

One great thing I like about google are the labs. They can be found here: http://labs.google.com. I automatically have my homepage set to the keyboard shortcut page, which can be found here: http://labs.google.com/keys/index.html. It has a lot of neat keyboard shortcuts like pressing the I, J, K, and L keys for your results. You can also press C for the cache page, N for the next page, P for the previous page, S for the Similar page, and the list goes on and on.

[btvillarin]

Especially when troubleshooting Windows or something, I want to search the Microsoft Help and Support site first. So, I type in the search string ending with site:support.microsoft.com.

Example

Bryan

[Master Jedi]

I find it hard to belive that people cant come up with things to put in the OT forums that actually have some meaning to something so here is my attempt

How do YOU search google? I limited it to google because most people use it anyways and search engines can vary. Well we all know (or most of us anyways) the basics of using google (the use of AND, NOT, OR and such).

So is my "special" technique: When I want to know the title to a song I do not know I will use the quotes around a lyric from the song as follows (so my taste in music is coming though no comments lol):

"He was a boy she was a girl"

Most people will know that this song is "Sk8er Boi" (or Skater Boy) with either a frown or a smile. It does work as you can see here

Maybe we can add on to this and all become better google users

I don't use AND or NOT. They can be replaced with +'s and -'s like:
Search for water AND ski Not snow (+ski +water -snow)
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=n ... ki+%2Dsnow

Search for water AND ski AND snow (+water +ski +snow)
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=n ... ki+%2Bsnow

Edit: I use the google toolbar. It makes searches easier: http://toolbar.google.com

[Matt]

Especially when troubleshooting Windows or something, I want to search the Microsoft Help and Support site first. So, I type in the search string ending with site:support.microsoft.com.

Example

Bryan

I also the site search a lot when searching for something. On one of my webpages, I have a link to the site search of my webpage on google. Its actually pretty cool!

[Plasma2002b]

i like setting my homepage to a search engine, but i hate to have to load it everytime (ie from dialup) so i finally got fed up with it and decided to do something about it.

i set this as my homepage.

http://schwippy.com/search.html

yes, its another INGENIUOS creation by me lol, but yeah, it includes the most used things i use on the net all in one simple small html. and i have it set so the sursor just goes straight to the google search, that way as soon I press the 'E' button for internet explorer i can just automatically start typing, and it doesnt change the address bar but instead starts typing in the google search box.

this was just something to make my life much more easier/lazier lol

tell me what yall think about it..... any other fields that should go on there maybe?

(i made it about 6 months ago, lol)

[Anthony]

So Brain... where are the seach words stored on your sever? Did you see mine?

[Plasma2002b]

So Brain... where are the seach words stored on your sever? Did you see mine?

wait what?

i dont know what ya mean....... that page is just the text boxes that link to the sites' search box results