Advanced Googling
RIVER BENDER - NOVEMBER, 2004
I
think Google (www.google.com) is the best search engine on the Internet. In this article I will discuss a few Google operators that can be used along with your search words to make searches more specific. Some of the operators may surprise you when you see web pages come up that apparently were never intended to be made public, especially when using the allinurl operator. You might see lists of employee's salaries or spreadsheets showing personal finances and it will seem like you're hacking into someone's PC but it's perfectly legitimate. People who troll the Internet for confidential information are called "Googledorks" but they can do webmasters a favor by letting them know their personal data is exposed. I once contacted a church in Wilmington that had a list of every member's e-mail address ripe for harvesting by spammers. The list was removed immediatedly.The following operators are typed in the Google search area. Be sure to type the colon followed by your search words with no space after the colon.
allinurl:
Example: allinurl:xls list This will search for web page addresses (URLs) that have the words xls and list in the address. This means you'll find MS Excel spreadsheet lists with a .xls file extension, some of which will be quite confidential. To see a complete list of other file extensions to use type "file name extension" in www.google.com. Most of the hits using the allinurl operator will allow the display to be in html language if you don't have a program to display it, such as MS Excel that's needed to display .xls files.
allintitle:
Example: allintitle:river bend This will search web pages that have river and bend in the title of the page. The first hit that came up was the Town of River Bend web page at http://www.ci.river-bend.nc.us/.
Example: allintitle:welcome to Many pages have "Welcome to", "how to", "index of", "directory of" or "list of" in the title. Follow this with another search word to find the specific topic you're looking for.
allintext:
Example: allintext:cataract lens new This will search web pages that have the words cataract, lens and new in the text of the page. Besides searching the Web, you may wish to search News for recent information. This also applies to the other operators.
filetype:
Example: filetype:xls duke medical directory This operator works much like the allinurl operator above and in this example searches for an Excel spreadsheet showing the words Duke, medical and directory on it. One hit showed numerous Physician Assistance programs at colleges along with tuition rates.
site:
Example: site:http://www.microsoft.com help This will search for the word help on all web pages having the Microsoft domain address. If you had searched just microsoft and help without the operator you would have gotten help hits from sites other than Microsoft.
info:
Example: info:http://www.ci.river-bend.nc.us/ If you have a web page this is a handy operator to search for information about it such as Google's cache (or snapshot they took when they last crawled the web), web pages that link to it and web pages that have the URL in it. Try the above example search and see all the web sites that link to the River Bend web page.
define:
Example: define:omphaloskepsis This will search for the definition of a word or phrase. In this example it came up with "contemplation of one's navel" as the definition of omphaloskepsis. I used to do this when I was an engineer.
stocks:
Example: stocks: msft intc csco This is a handy quick lookup of prices for stock symbols. It uses the Yahoo Finance web page. Note that a space is required after the colon for this operator to work properly.
rphonebook: and bphonebook:
Example: rphonebook:david wallace new bern This found my phone number, address and provided a map link. It also provides the opportunity to delete your name from the phonebook search. bphonebook does the same for business phones. If you have a phone number that you want the name for try typing it with the area code in Google without an operator. This is very handy for those using Callwave that displays the calling number.
There are several more operator words in Google that can be found at http://www.googleguide.com/advanced_operators.html.
Also at Soople.com (www.soople.com) ,which is unrelated to Google, many of the Google operator words are automated so that you don't have to remember them. Try it. This is a nice site.