怎么查询公章是否备案:Top 20 Search Engine Helpers

Seek and Ye Shall Find: Top 20 Search Engine Helpers

READ MORE: Ask Jeeves, Feature, Google, MSN, Search engines, Seek and Ye Shall Find, Top, Yahoo, tricks

by Wendy Boswell

All of us have gone to a search engine and typed in a query, crossing our fingers that the Search Engine Powers will magically know EXACTLY what we mean when we say “needlepoint hat cheese Chicago.” Unfortunately, search engines and directories do not have extrasensory powers of perception, but fortunately, that’s where search engine helpers come in.

What are “search helpers”?

Think of search helpers as the hamburger in the popular (at least in my house) Hamburger Helper pre-packaged dinners. You have to add hamburger in order to make the dinner taste good and come out the way it’s supposed to; if you didn’t, you’d get a weird mishmash of seasoning and crunchy pasta. Search helpers are a search engine’s hamburger – once you add them, the search results casserole smells good, looks tasty, and won’t go bad in the fridge.

Top Twenty Search Helpers

All of these search helpers have been diligently tested by a team of crack search engine scientists working in an underground lab in…well, actually, no, but I’ve put them through their paces in four different search engines: Google, Yahoo, MSN Search, and Ask Jeeves. Unless otherwise noted, these search helpers will work with the four search engines I focus on in this article. Don’t be afraid to mix up these search helpers. See what combinations you can come up with; they might not always work the way you’d hoped, but you might come up with something new and unique. When you’re done reading the long version of the Top Twenty Search Helpers, you can print out this Web Search Cheat Sheet [PDF] for a handy Internet reference.

1. Exact Phrase in Quotes: every single search engine (Google, Yahoo, MSN Search, and Ask Jeeves) will look for every word in a search string when you include it in quotes. For example: "cheese doodles" tells the search engine to match both of these words, “cheese” and “doodles, ” and to make sure that they are searched for as a phrase.
2. Exclude Terms: put a minus (-) sign in front of the word you’d like excluded. For example: sponge –bob (notice that there’s a space after the first word and before the minus sign).
3. Include Terms: place a plus (+) sign in front of the word you want included. For example: Toy Story +2.
4. Wildcard search: A wildcard could be thought of a stand-in word or words that you’d like the search engine to come back with. For instance: how now * cow, or Santa lives in the * pole or you can even ask a question: search engines index * of the web (it’s a fraction or portion). Works well in all but AskJeeves.
5. Site search: use site:site address to search within a site for something. For example: site:websearch.about.com "invisible web" will return all results from the web address websearch.about.com for the Invisible Web.
6. Link search: see what other sites are linking to a specific web address. It makes a difference if you include the “www” or not in the number of links returned. For example:
   Yahoo: link:http://www.lifehacker.com OR link:http://lifehacker. AskJeeves: not supported Google: link:http://www.lifehacker.com OR link:http://lifehacker. MSN Search: link:http://lifehacker.com OR link:http://www.lifehacker.
   All Engines: Another (somewhat more accurate) way to see who is linking to what is this command: www.lifehacker.com -site:www.lifehacker.com . This shows you all the pages actually linking to Lifehacker, minus the pages within its own domain.
7. Cache: See what the site used to look like (good for sites that change often). Different ways to do this in each search engine:
   
   Yahoo: doesn’t support cache:domain.com command; instead, search for a domain name (www.google.com) and look for the cached text link underneath your search results.
   AskJeeves: same deal as Yahoo
   MSN Search: same as Yahoo
   Google: cache:google.
   
   OR: you could just go to Internet Archive.
8. Filetype: search for a specific type of file, for example, if you are looking for zoology information and would like to limit your search to only PowerPoint results:
   
   Google: zoology filetype:ppt
   MSN: zoology filetype:ppt
   Yahoo: zoology originurlextension:ppt
   AskJeeves: filetype search unavailable.
   
   
9. Title Search: restrict your search to words found in web page titles. For example:
   
   Yahoo: title:Nike
   Google: allintitle:nike
   MSN: intitle:nike
   AskJeeves: intitle:nike
   
   
10. URL Search: searches for pages that have whatever word you specify anywhere in the host name, path name, or filename. For example:
    
    Yahoo: inurl:chewbacca
    Google: allinurl: chewbacca OR inurl: chewbacca
    MSN: inurl: chewbacca
    AskJeeves: inurl: chewbacca
    
    
11. Limit search to a specific domain: this will limit your search to only those domains that you specify you want results from. For example:
    
    site:.edu herbivorous plants (must take out the period before the “edu” in MSN)
    site:.org celebrity charity auction
site:.gov "civil war" archives
    
    As a side note, you can also limit Google to just the .mil and .gov domains by navigating to Google UncleSam.
12. Search within a specific date range: You can narrow you search to only a very specific window of time, i.e., you’re looking for Macromedia Dreamweaver information only between August and October 2005.
    
    AskJeeves: macromedia dreamweaver betweendate:200508,200510
    MSN: somewhat confusing to do; MSN has provided a Search Builder pull-down below the main search query box that allows you to stack your results from “updated very recently” to “static” (page hasn’t been updated in a while).
    Yahoo: on the Yahoo Advanced page there is a drop-down menu titled “Updated.” You have four choices: search for content “anytime”, “within the past three months”, “within the past six months”, “within a year.”
    Google: macromedia dreamweaver daterange:200508-200510
    
    
13. Word definition. Find what something means fast.
    
    Google: define:cornucopia
    Yahoo: define cornucopia
    AskJeeves: define: cornucopia
    MSN Search: definition: cornucopia
14. Get a stock quote: type in quote nkesa (insert your own stock symbol) to any of the four and you’ll get an instant stock quote.
15. Limit search by country: You can search within a particular country’s top domain codes. For example:
    site:.br "Rio de Janeiro"
    This will only search .br domains (Brazil) for the search query “rio de Janeiro”. (Note: you’ll need to take out the period before the domain name code in order for this to work at MSN). Here’s the complete list of country codes.
16. Convert stuff: For instance, you want to see what 45 degrees Celsius looks like in Fahrenheit:
    
    Yahoo: convert 45 Celsius to Fahrenheit
    Google: 45 Celsius in Fahrenheit
    Ask Jeeves: convert 45 Celsius to Fahrenheit
    MSN Search: 45 Celsius in Fahrenheit
    
    
17. Solve a math problem. Next time you can’t find the calculator, check online instead. For instance:
    4*(12-6/3)
    Google, Yahoo, and MSN Search support just typing in a simplistic math problem. Not supported in AskJeeves.
18. Check your flight status. Check your flight status online by typing in the name of the airlines and the flight number – for example: United 45 or Alaska Airlines 63 . Not supported at MSN Search.
19. Check gas prices in your area. Get an instant list of gas stations in your area by typing in: gas 97110 (insert your own zip code)
    Not supported in AskJeeves.
20. Check the weather: Instantly get weather results by typing in weather 97110 (insert your own zip code). Works in all four search engines.

All of the above profiled search helpers will save you time and energy when you’re really looking for something (and there’s a ton more search helpers out there!), but here are a couple more tips that can save you some work right out of the gate:

Be specific, be concise, and be precise. Kind of redundant there, but it’s worth repeating (aren’t I punny?). The more words you type in for a query, the more narrowed your search. Case in point: the query bead got over 10 million results in Google, but silver beaded swarovski tassel bracelet size 2 got around 21,000.

Use the right search engine for the right search. There are a ton of highly specialized search engines out there, some of which I’ve profiled: A to Z Search Engines and Directories, 100 Search Engines in 100 Days, Multimedia Searching, etc. So many people go straight to the well-known search engines, and while that’s totally fine, you might just want to check out some of these niche, or vertical, search engines as well.

Put RSS and alerts to work for you. Most major search engines have alert services available that you can personalize to come to you every time there’s any kind of blip on your particular topic; here’s the four profiled in this article: Google Alerts Yahoo Alerts MSN Search Alerts AskJeeves has Bloglines, where you can collate all your subscribed searches, feeds, keyword alerts, etc.

In addition, most sites nowadays have RSS, or Really Simple Syndication, enabled. This means that once you subscribe to the feed using a feed reader such as Bloglines, etc., the content comes to you.

Don’t stop at just search engines. Search engines are not even close to indexing the entire Web, and while these search helpers will help you narrow down your search, there are other ways to find what you may be looking for. Check out specific research and reference sites, look for discussion groups and message boards, the Invisible Web or sort through blogs to find more information about your topic. Be bold in your search adventures – and maybe you’ll end up where no searcher has gone before.

Download a Web Search Cheat Sheet PDF file of these top 20 search engine helpers in a handy table format.

Wendy Boswell edits About.com’s Web Search section.