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Dorking: the use of search engines to find very specific data

alec.fyi

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Re: Dorking: the use of search engines to find very specific data

#11

Post by mrnuclear »

voldacar wrote: post #2

Why doesn't google.com have a comprehensive list of these? I'm constantly seeing new ones that I didn't know about, but google never teaches you about them so you have to find them in obscure blog posts

At least now we are somewhat more empowered to find obscure blog posts. Which raises the suggestion that hackers are advantaged towards finding information. Which raises the suggestion that we should take the independent initiative of using SEO to inform more people about how to become search super-users.

Re: Dorking: the use of search engines to find very specific data

#12

Post by sawaruna »

Might be my librarian career bias but I'm always surprised at how few people know about query operators. Ironically as Google search seems to be ignoring vital parts of people's queries, they are becoming more needed now, whereas years ago I would have assumed a constantly improving Google search would get better at determining what I was looking for.

Re: Dorking: the use of search engines to find very specific data

#13

Post by beachy »

voldacar wrote: post #2

Why doesn't google.com have a comprehensive list of these? I'm constantly seeing new ones that I didn't know about, but google never teaches you about them so you have to find them in obscure blog posts

Having a reliable search syntax would commoditise Google as other search engines could offer the same options. Having just a search box, instead of lots of options was how they moved ahead of e.g altavista in the first place.

Google would rather people are trained to just type human speak into the search box.

Re: Dorking: the use of search engines to find very specific data

#15

Post by lstamour »

voldacar wrote: post #2

Why doesn't google.com have a comprehensive list of these? I'm constantly seeing new ones that I didn't know about, but google never teaches you about them so you have to find them in obscure blog posts

https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/2466433?hl=en but it's not complete. My favourite is actually the "range" operator. I don't need it often, but when combined with the exact match quotation marks, it's great. For example, here's a search for Sony bluetooth headphones available on Amazon.ca for between CA$100 and $150: https://www.google.com/search?rls=en&q=site%3Aamazon.ca+%22C...

The range operator also works great with years, dates, though the Tools menu with shortcuts for before: and after: operators can help there too.

One I haven't seen mentioned yet but used to be documented is that you can leave out words in a phrase by replacing them with an asterisk. I'm having trouble not italicizing text in this comment box, so pretend \* means a single asterisk: "Stocks rose today by \* percent" as a search matches the phrase "stocks rose today, led by a 4.4 percent". (Which until this post, had only one result on Google.)

Note that it's not 100% exact matching, because for actually exact matches you have to select "Verbatim" under Tools > All Results in the menu below the search box on the results page.

The only downside to using all these operators is that you'll get very familiar and frustrated with the Google reCAPTCHA prompts as your search is "too precise to be human". Even when signed in to Google, especially often in Safari on an iPhone. Sigh.

Re: Dorking: the use of search engines to find very specific data

#16

Post by kebman »

sawaruna wrote: post #12

Might be my librarian career bias but I'm always surprised at how few people know about query operators. Ironically as Google search seems to be ignoring vital parts of people's queries, they are becoming more needed now, whereas years ago I would have assumed a constantly improving Google search would get better at determining what I was looking for.

You don't even wanna know how many times specialized searches have saved my ass, after multiple years on uni, and working as a writer, journalist, programmer, en even a musician! You can safely say that my entire life revolves around being good at doing various forms of searches.

Re: Dorking: the use of search engines to find very specific data

#18

Post by abarrettwilsdon »

lizardmancan wrote: post #6

https://www.google.nl/search?q=site%3A+news.ycombinator.com+... i use to use these a lot but now it's just useless

Try wrapping lizardmancan in quotation marks - "lizardmancan". That narrows it down to 10 results for me

(also: you'll want to remove the space between site: and news.ycombinator.com)

Re: Dorking: the use of search engines to find very specific data

#20

Post by dragonwriter »

KorfmannArno wrote: post #3
voldacar wrote: post #2

Why doesn't google.com have a comprehensive list of these? I'm constantly seeing new ones that I didn't know about, but google never teaches you about them so you have to find them in obscure blog posts

My guess would be because Google eventually wants users to find everything via natural language queries.

Actually, Google eventually wants users to find everything with predictive AI giving it to them before they search. That's not really a secret, they've announced more than once in the past that that is what they are increasingly working toward.
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