Last week a friend wrote to me with a great question. He wrote:
Whenever I try to use site: operator, it sometimes doesn't do what I expect. For example, I was looking for some Javascript code and did this query. In particular, I did NOT want any results from the Closure-library.Googlecode.com site. So I did the following query:[ -site:closure-library "closure" autocomplete ]
What's weird is that the results STILL include items from Closure-library.googlecode.com
Doesn't my minus sign in front of the site: prevent this from happening?
I had to stop and think about this for a minute. Why WAS he getting results from Closure-library.googlecode.com?
Why? Because site: only works on top-level domains. To make this particular example work, you have to fully specify the domain. That is, you'd have to write: -site:closure-library.googlecode.com as in the example below.
Versions of site: that work properly are...
site:.gov -- searches all .GOV sites
site:searchresearch1.blogspot.com inurl:2010 -- searches my blog with 2010 in the URL
site:www.nasa.gov/multimedia -- search all of NASA.gov/multimedia
site:www.google.co.za news -- search all of Google South Africa for News
And of course, putting a minus-sign in front of any of these will AVOID those resources.
But you can't just put the leading part of a website's name into the site: operator and hope for it to work. It has to be able to expand to a full website name!
Hope this pro-tip helps some of you!
Search on.
Would you write a post about Google Alerts and query tips in it? Because this service is a little bit hard to use, maybe only for me. Results on my queries aren't the same in Alerts and Google.com.
ReplyDeleteI think this service should keep growing. In Google Now and IFTTT way but wider. Alert when weather will change, when movie will arrive in near theater and etc.
ps: site:www.google.co.za news - search all pages in 'google.co.za' with word 'news'. Almost every Google navigation bar has it.
site:news.google.co.za "query" - search exact words in News service of 'google.co.za'.
Thanks for the tip.
ReplyDeleteI thought it was like in this example: related:simplyrecipes.com/recipes/perfect_guacamole/ that you need to add in the query an space to find the results desired. related: simplyrecipes.com/recipes/perfect_guacamole/
And now I learn a new thing!.
I'd like to know more about what Dmytro asks, if possible. It is interesting to add Google alerts
Thank you and have a great month, Dr. Russell
Thanks Dan for the useful tips. This particular tip struck a cord in me that I would find useful and perhaps help others. I don't have a webpage, have never built a website and it struck me that type of experience is probably very useful. Not that I want to build websites. But understanding the building blocks ought to give you insight to search techniques. I was just looking at Google Custom Search Engine for ideas. If you think we can benefit could you give a tip in the future. Thanks.
ReplyDeleteDaniel, I believe that you should have used a completely different Google search operator, namely inurl: So, in you example, this would have given the result you first expected:
ReplyDelete-inurl:closure-library "closure" autocomplete
This area is very will covered here since long: http://www.googleguide.com/advanced_operators.html
I also like this article: http://iosint.wordpress.com/category/osint-in-practice/2-collection/search-engines/
I completely agree with you. In fact, I meant to mention it in this post (but ran out of time). I previously covered inurl: in http://searchresearch1.blogspot.com/2010/10/around-has-always-been-around.html and http://searchresearch1.blogspot.com/2012/12/wednesday-search-challenge-121912.html and
Deletehttp://searchresearch1.blogspot.com/2011/10/wednesday-search-challenge-october-19.html and
http://www.powersearchingwithgoogle.com/assets/textversions/6-24-Using_site_structure/624Usingsitestructure.html#h.eccuysiayehc
It might be a bit nit picky, but since this is a post on the workings of site: I wanted to point out that searching for site:www.example.com would not search all the pages at example.com, the correct search to do that would be site:example.com. That is because the www is treated as a sub-domain, and thus eliminates all other sub-domain.
ReplyDeleteWhen I search the Canadian Forces website like this site:www.forces.gc.ca I am missing pages like army.forces.gc.ca, in that particular case the vast majority of pages are found in sub-domains.
in general I avoid using www in my site: searches, unless I have a good reason to leave it in.
On a couple rare occasions I have found this search useful basically it is a way to get you a sense of what sub-domains exist. If after surveying the results a particular sub-domain contains a particular type of information then you can focus in on that sub-domain.
I hope that is clear, and useful.
The site: operator, I've just learned from Alex Chitu's blog (http://googlesystem.blogspot.pt/2013/03/advanced-uses-for-googles-site-operator.html) is one of the few if not the only Google operators that work with a wildcard. So, if you search [ site:amazon.* ] you will find all international Amazon's domains.
ReplyDeleteThe problem is that the results are not consistent, that is, this trick does not work every time. In fact, [ -site:closure-library.* "closure" autocomplete ] gives the same results as the search without the asterisk. Even if you add .com to the search — [ -site:closure-library.*.com "closure" autocomplete ] — the results are the same.
What's more, [ site:closure-library.* "closure" autocomplete ] or [ site:closure-library.*.com "closure" autocomplete ] — without the minus, i.e., supposedly telling Google to search only in that — don't yield any results, contrary to [ inurl:closure-library "closure" autocomplete ].
By the way, somehow if you add the asterisk to inurl:closure-library [ inurl:closure-library.* "closure" autocomplete ], the set of results is different and much smaller, not larger as could be expected.
informative
ReplyDelete