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Monday, June 11, 2007

Optimize your "Search" on Search Engines

by Sushma Verma 2 comments


UPDATE: Improved version of this article is here:

Search Operators tell Search Engine what exactly you want


A common scenario faced by everyone, everyday is searching something or the other. There are two ways of proceeding further:
Layman way
The user opens a search engine, type in what he/she wants and got a really long list, mostly with irrelevant stuff. Then he/she will have to look for the thing on several links listed on their screen. Sometimes the user got the things as the way he/she wants but not every time.
Pro way
The user opens a search engine, type in the keywords and got a relevant list of results , exactly the way he/she wants and there he/she is done.
But how the user is able to get results quickly and efficiently?
What is the thing that Pro way differs from the Layman way?
Well the answer is "Using proper syntax". You can easily find your way around on almost everything by using these simple keywords!

Here are the syntaxes that can makes the difference in results:
Boolean function:
And - This function is default i.e. if you search for anything without a function, the SE (Search engine) will search for all of them. For Eg: Searching for blogger themes, you will get results for all of them, it can be in a single document or in different documents some containing blogger and some containing themes.
OR - If you want that either of the words should be acceptable then you can use OR. For Eg: themes OR templates.
If you want the exact phrase you can group your search with " "
For Eg: "Search Engine Optimization" will show all the pages where all three of them are together and in the same sequence

Using * - Searching for "Search Engine *" will show pages containing Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Tips and so on. (Just like the WILD CARDS)

intitle: - It restricts your search to the titles of the pages only.

allintitle: - It restricts the search to the pages where all specified words make up the title of the web page.

inurl: - It restricts your search to the URLs of web pages.

allinurl: -
It restricts the search to the pages where all specified words make up the URL of the web page.

intext: - It searches only in body test ignoring link text, URLs & titles.

allintext: - It searches for all of the specified words in the body text.

inanchor: - It searches for text in a page's link anchors. A link anchor is the
descriptive text of a link.

site: - It searches for the exact site. For Eg: site: tech4sure.blogspot.com

link: It returns a list of pages linked to the specified url.

cache: It finds a copy of the page that SE indexed, even if that page is no longer
exists. This type of search is helpful for pages that change often.

filetype: It searches the suffixes or filename extensions. For Eg: filetype: guide.pdf etc.

If you know more syntaxes that can filter your search, leave them in the comment box.
I will add them here!

Comments 2 comments
Shankar Ganesh said...

Great tips buddy. I always fail to use the wildcard *. It's one of the best.

Ashfame said...

Yeah!
No Doubt, Wildcard * is one of the best.
Thanks for your comment Shankar!

Ashfame
I am a tech freak who loves to share.
Homepage : Ashfame.com
You can mail me at ashishsainiashfam[at]gmail[dot]com

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