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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

#111

Post by hamburglar »

Xophmeister wrote: post #60
flywheel wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whoever the first developer was that used "deprecated" got it kind of wrong, the word should have been "depreciated". Deprecate: "express disapproval of." Depreciate: "diminish in value over a period of time." I kind of cringe when other developers say "deprecated". Edit: Versioning and not removing APIs is kind of the way to go, so you don't break client apps that possibly can't be updated easily or at all. "Depreci…

I used to always use "depreciated" until I was embarrassingly corrected one day :P

To be frank, grandparent sounds like someone who was corrected one day, and rather than learn something and move on, dug in and developed a detailed justification for why the rest of the world was mistaken so he can cringe about their ignorance.

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

#112

Post by spanhandler »

IdiocyInAction wrote: post #89
darepublic wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google still good for coding related searches

You get SEO crap very often though IME.

Depends on the platform and what you're looking for. Some operating systems and languages/ecosystems are worse than others. Windows stuff is largely incredibly bad (not saying Windows is bad, for this reason anyway, just that search results for anything MS-related tend to be awful). The nerdier the OS and less "corporate" the language, the better the results get.

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

#113

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

I have a question for anyone reading this thread:

Do you believe you can get consistent results with any search?

For example, if we pick some uncommon search terms will we get the same results on the first search, the second search, the third, etc. Or will the results change?

I did a search with some terms from one of the comments in this thread, in quotes. The first search returned only one result: this thread.

As I searched the same quoted terms repeatedly along with additional terms, more results were returned that contained the exact string of original terms. Surprised by this, I tried a search with only the original terms, in quotes, once again. This time the search returned more than just the one result.

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

#116

Post by JadeNB »

EE84M3i wrote: post #41
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

One reason they might not have a comprehensive list is because some might be relatively expensive to execute, but they can't/won't disable them for legacy reasons.

> One reason they might not have a comprehensive list is because some might be relatively expensive to execute, but they can't/won't disable them for legacy reasons.

Ah, Google, always so reluctant to get rid of anything legacy because of their fanatical devotion to their existing user base.

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

#117

Post by reaperducer »

spanhandler wrote: post #112
IdiocyInAction wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You get SEO crap very often though IME.

Depends on the platform and what you're looking for. Some operating systems and languages/ecosystems are worse than others. Windows stuff is largely incredibly bad (not saying Windows is bad, for this reason anyway, just that search results for anything MS-related tend to be awful). The nerdier the OS and less "corporate" the language, the better the results get.

The nerdier the OS and less "corporate" the language, the better the results get.

But don't get too obscure. Otherwise, you'll discover that Google has dropped the information you require from its index because it's not new or trendy enough.

If we can get Taylor Swift interested in the old internet, then Google will suddenly snap back into usefulness.

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

#118

Post by julian_t »

chrisb wrote: post #61
neilduncan wrote: post #14

I live two towns over from Dorking. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorking

I live just a few miles to the North. Nice to see a few other ~Dorking locals here :)

Slightly more than a few miles, but still pretty local (KT4)!

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

#119

Post by abarrettwilsdon »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #113

I have a question for anyone reading this thread: Do you believe you can get consistent results with any search? For example, if we pick some uncommon search terms will we get the same results on the first search, the second search, the third, etc. Or will the results change? I did a search with some terms from one of the comments in this thread, in quotes. The first search returned only one result: this thread. As I…

If it's specific enough, the SERP should stay the same until someone else publishes the same thing

e.g. the search of another article "set up Google Sheets APIs (and treat Sheets like a database)"

turns up my site and a couple Twitter threads talking about it (plus a phishing site which has scraped and republished it). I presume that will stay the same b/c it's such a specific title phrase (but not because searches are necessarily deterministic)

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

#120

Post by uj8efdkjfdshf »

userbinator wrote: post #95
yuvadam wrote: post #45

Dorking is not that easy to do, Google is very easy on assuming you are being malicious on certain queries, try one too many and you'll hit their dreaded captcha that is impossible to pass.

That really angers me, and I've tripped it more times than I can count, usually by searching for very specific things. Coworkers have also run into it multiple times (before everyone started working from home, we would exclaim "Fuck you, Google!" and raise a middle finger to the screen, which was a cue to everyone else to help). The fact that they think you're "not human" when you use a search engine for its intended…

You could always keep Google Chrome open to rerun these specific queries, as the captchas are less irritating to solve then.
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