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Get better at Googling

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Re: Get better at Googling

#211

Post by de_nied »

qyi wrote: post #201

> 1. Use quotes to force an exact-match search Almost never works these days. Google now usually just quantizes your search terms into an ad or ultra popular news article written 3 minutes ago. It also ignores all your operators most of the time. Bonus: If you use something like inurl: You get blocked for a "hacking attempt". Google also has blocked Tor and VPNs since 2006 or so. In fact, they are the one big search…

Google also has verbatim search, which works a lot better than quotes, but still fails with some symbol keys.

Re: Get better at Googling

#212

Post by gnicholas »

qyi wrote: post #201

> 1. Use quotes to force an exact-match search Almost never works these days. Google now usually just quantizes your search terms into an ad or ultra popular news article written 3 minutes ago. It also ignores all your operators most of the time. Bonus: If you use something like inurl: You get blocked for a "hacking attempt". Google also has blocked Tor and VPNs since 2006 or so. In fact, they are the one big search…

Yeah, it seems that you now have to go into Tools > All Results > Exact Match to get this behavior. Double quotes doesn't cut it anymore.

Re: Get better at Googling

#213

Post by phreack »

tyingq wrote: post #18

The article is missing several operators that are useful. Like inurl:, intitle:, allintitle:, etc. The "AROUND" proximity search is neat as well, especially for words with dual meaning. like: bootstrap AROUND(6) cpu Finds "bootstrap" within 6 words of "cpu", which culls out most (not all) of the unwanted results about the bootstrap js library. This article seems to cover most of the ones I'm aware of: https://ahrefs.…

Sadly, every time I try to get technical with these when I'm trying to Google with precision, after two or three searches I start getting blocked by really hard Captchas, and messages saying I might be either a bot or a hacker. It's really annoying.

Re: Get better at Googling

#214

Post by Tagbert »

phreack wrote: post #213
tyingq wrote: post #18

The article is missing several operators that are useful. Like inurl:, intitle:, allintitle:, etc. The "AROUND" proximity search is neat as well, especially for words with dual meaning. like: bootstrap AROUND(6) cpu Finds "bootstrap" within 6 words of "cpu", which culls out most (not all) of the unwanted results about the bootstrap js library. This article seems to cover most of the ones I'm aware of: https://ahrefs.…

Sadly, every time I try to get technical with these when I'm trying to Google with precision, after two or three searches I start getting blocked by really hard Captchas, and messages saying I might be either a bot or a hacker. It's really annoying.

Obviously a human user would never use such cryptic and complex search terms. /s

Re: Get better at Googling

#215

Post by docmars »

qyi wrote: post #201

> 1. Use quotes to force an exact-match search Almost never works these days. Google now usually just quantizes your search terms into an ad or ultra popular news article written 3 minutes ago. It also ignores all your operators most of the time. Bonus: If you use something like inurl: You get blocked for a "hacking attempt". Google also has blocked Tor and VPNs since 2006 or so. In fact, they are the one big search…

I believe Google is more concerned with combating the apparent world-ending risk of someone discovering misinformation and parsing that information themselves (gasp), than providing a useful search engine to the majority who are using it with good intentions, as you described.

Re: Get better at Googling

#216

Post by markdown »

docmars wrote: post #215
qyi wrote: post #201

> 1. Use quotes to force an exact-match search Almost never works these days. Google now usually just quantizes your search terms into an ad or ultra popular news article written 3 minutes ago. It also ignores all your operators most of the time. Bonus: If you use something like inurl: You get blocked for a "hacking attempt". Google also has blocked Tor and VPNs since 2006 or so. In fact, they are the one big search…

I believe Google is more concerned with combating the apparent world-ending risk of someone discovering misinformation and parsing that information themselves ( gasp ), than providing a useful search engine to the majority who are using it with good intentions, as you described.

You jest but USA elected Donald Trump to lead them, proving once and for all that misinformation spread by the internet is potentially world-ending.

You jest but if a pandemic 100 times as deadly as COVID came upon us, anti-vaxxers and the misinformation they spread via the internet could potentially end the world.

You either education your people, or you have to control the information they receive.

The GOP has long chosen to make Americans more stupid (privatisation of education, the teaching of fairy tales in the science classroom, etc) so that they can continue to be manipulated into voting for charlatans. As a result, the only way to keep the country from completely going off the rails on the backs of dumb fucks is to manipulate the information they receive... try and protect them from misinformation, disinformation, and lies.

Re: Get better at Googling

#217

Post by docmars »

markdown wrote: post #216
docmars wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe Google is more concerned with combating the apparent world-ending risk of someone discovering misinformation and parsing that information themselves ( gasp ), than providing a useful search engine to the majority who are using it with good intentions, as you described.

You jest but USA elected Donald Trump to lead them, proving once and for all that misinformation spread by the internet is potentially world-ending. You jest but if a pandemic 100 times as deadly as COVID came upon us, anti-vaxxers and the misinformation they spread via the internet could potentially end the world. You either education your people, or you have to control the information they receive. The GOP has long…

I wholeheartedly disagree with just about everything you said (much of it is misinformation and/or hysterics), but I appreciate you sharing your thoughts. :)

Re: Get better at Googling

#218

Post by vram22 »

eitland wrote: post #173
elondaits wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try opening the “Search tools” menu in the results page and selecting “Verbatim”... I think that makes “literal” searches work, because otherwise Google uses synonyms and language analysis to attempt to match your search to results.

That too has consistently failed between 2007 and late 2020. Now it just fails inconsistently (i.e. it sometimes works).

Google the company, runs on an algorithm of arbitrary complexity.

Re: Get better at Googling

#219

Post by rcoveson »

qyi wrote: post #201

> 1. Use quotes to force an exact-match search Almost never works these days. Google now usually just quantizes your search terms into an ad or ultra popular news article written 3 minutes ago. It also ignores all your operators most of the time. Bonus: If you use something like inurl: You get blocked for a "hacking attempt". Google also has blocked Tor and VPNs since 2006 or so. In fact, they are the one big search…

I'm struck by the profundity of this loss. It's almost as bad as if something like archive.org were to just disappear. SaaS is so ephemeral. One day, you have access to a version of Google that works absurdly well. The next, it's gone forever.

I used to use Google so much that it felt like a border collie in those dog competitions. I knew how it behaved, I had a bank of commands/searches that I had half-memorized and which I could use to restore knowledge that had been evicted from my cache. It repeatedly surprised and delighted me with how smart and loyal it was. Like a good dog.

And then that dog got brain cancer. It doesn't know any commands anymore. All it can do is vomit up clickbait-y news stories from the last 4 years. And I'll never get to interact with the old one ever again. You can't archive.org a SaaS application.

Re: Get better at Googling

#220

Post by the_pwner224 »

b215826 wrote: post #202
tyingq wrote: post #18

The article is missing several operators that are useful. Like inurl:, intitle:, allintitle:, etc. The "AROUND" proximity search is neat as well, especially for words with dual meaning. like: bootstrap AROUND(6) cpu Finds "bootstrap" within 6 words of "cpu", which culls out most (not all) of the unwanted results about the bootstrap js library. This article seems to cover most of the ones I'm aware of: https://ahrefs.…

The inurl: keyword is extremely useful when combined with the site: keyword, e.g., https://www.google.com/search?q=site:reddit.com+inurl:progra... This would pull up results for "Vim tutorial" from the /r/programming subreddit. Of course, there are better ways to search by subreddit, but using site: and inurl: is the most website-agnostic way to narrow down results. Both these keywords also work on DuckDuckGo. I also…

You can just do site:reddit.com/r/programming :)
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