Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

alec.fyi

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 207 posts

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

#131

Post by joe-collins »

uniqueid wrote: post #24

Last week I blocked every * .google.* domain on my network except "youtube-ui.l.google.com". Google Search: (1) ask a natural language question (since actual search is hobbled) (2) get unrelated garbage and ads back (3) blame yourself for "not being technical enough" to understand why the results aren't actually garbage. Google Search has deteriorated to the point that so far I haven't missed it at all .

I've been slowly degoogling myself this year. For ~80% of my search, DDG has been entirely adequate.

I do miss some of Big G's cards, and their Maps is vastly superior to DDG's Apple Maps integration, even despite GMap's advertising. DDG's solution is wild, really: they use Apple for static-image-only maps with no real contextual interface, only a sidebar for search results. If you want directions, you must search for your destination by text alone, then in the sidebar choose to get directions from one of four providers (defaulting to Bing).

But when I just want an engine to match the text I give it (i.e. most of the time), DDG performs at least as well as Google's increasingly-fuzzy matching.

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

#132

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

lstamour wrote: post #103
1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there actually a page that says "too precise to be human" or are you just assuming this is what triggered the reCAPTCHA? If there is such a page, can you give an example query that would trigger it?

It mostly happens using "site:" queries which I use frequently to limit things to local websites (by domain) or for searching sites that have poor search engines (Amazon, for example). It rarely happens the first query, but often by the third or fourth modification or by the third or fourth page of results you visit, it will show a reCAPTCHA if it doesn't have enough "randomness" or doesn't think you're actually brow…

You could try your site:amazon.ca specific queries on DDG. DDG will allow you to iterate your queries without triggering a reCAPTHA. When you believe you have the best results you can get on DDG, then try that same query on Google. This way you avoid doing the iteration on Google and triggering the reCAPTCHA. Instead you just do one search on Google. Google will usually give some additional results that were not shown in DDG.

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

#133

Post by abarrettwilsdon »

bmay wrote: post #17

the "link:" operator doesn't work for me--it just seems to include the URL's tokens in the search

Hmm, I'm seeing the same now.

You can more or less replicate the functionality with intext:specific.url/subsite

Will update and credit you.

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

#134

Post by [deleted] »

JadeNB wrote: post #78
darepublic wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google still good for coding related searches

Depends on what coding-related search, I think. Searching for C is useless unless you know to search for clang, for example; but then you get results for the compiler. If you're trying to search for lesser known languages with short names or names that overlap with common words, then forget it! (Arguably that's a fault of the language, but arguably arguably you shouldn't have to choose what to name your creation base…

[deleted]

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

#135

Post by jjeaff »

uniqueid wrote: post #90
darepublic wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google still good for coding related searches

Ever spent three minutes opening useless links from Google's Search results, only to realize they dropped the keyword you searched? That seems quite common now, especially with programming keywords, which are often obscure. Remember Google Code Search, and Google (Usenet) Groups? Back then, Google cared about this stuff. Now they seem only to want to show you furniture ads, or get you to use their Zoom knockoff, etc.…

This is also very common with DDG. And the strange thing is that many times, DDG will even ignore if you are using parenthesis. The parenthesis seem to add weight but I will still get tons of results that don't contain the required words at all.

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

#136

Post by abarrettwilsdon »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #128
abarrettwilsdon wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

I am skeptical that quotes really work like the plus operator used to work. For example, try searching the following string in quotes: "the SERP should stay the same". https://www.google.com/search?q=%22the%20SERP%20should%20sta... Now, the logical presumption, assuming Google works as people say it does, is that each result will contain that exact string. If no results contain the string, then you should receive no…

When I run that query, it returns

`No results found for "the SERP should stay the same".`

Then defaults to providing the SERP for the fallback query:

`Results for the SERP should stay the same (without quotes):`

That SERP should change when this HN thread is indexed though

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

#137

Post by torben-friis »

Back when I was a teenager,I had a book titled "hacking with Google" by Johny long that was basically all specific searching tips and terms (oriented to find open vulnerabilities and the like, but still very useful in general despite the tacky name).

I wonder how much of it is still valid after all this time.

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

#138

Post by abarrettwilsdon »

mrnuclear wrote: post #11
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.

Yea, almost all existing Dorking content is around either SEO or offensive/defensive security scanning.

The broader OSINT has used dorking for a decade plus (e.g. exploit-db.com goes back to 2003).

The goal in writing this was to democratize access beyond those who use it regularly for work

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

#139

Post by uniqueid »

joe-collins wrote: post #131
uniqueid wrote: post #24

Last week I blocked every * .google.* domain on my network except "youtube-ui.l.google.com". Google Search: (1) ask a natural language question (since actual search is hobbled) (2) get unrelated garbage and ads back (3) blame yourself for "not being technical enough" to understand why the results aren't actually garbage. Google Search has deteriorated to the point that so far I haven't missed it at all .

I've been slowly degoogling myself this year. For ~80% of my search, DDG has been entirely adequate. I do miss some of Big G's cards, and their Maps is vastly superior to DDG's Apple Maps integration, even despite GMap's advertising. DDG's solution is wild, really: they use Apple for static-image-only maps with no real contextual interface, only a sidebar for search results. If you want directions , you must search f…

I'll miss browsing street view for fun. I doubt I use it more than six times a year, though.

For actual turn-by-turn navigation, I never used a Google or Apple product. I use an offline iPhone app (Navigon).

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

#140

Post by aaron695 »

Learn to use time. It's a drop down.

The web is slowly atrophying. Going back in time for originals makes a big difference.

Reverse is also true.

After a blow up the mass media will repeat the same thing on mass and swamp results.

Often an article in the last hour might have what you want, like the database link they are all talking about.

Post reply on HN