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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

#161

Post by lstamour »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #132
lstamour wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 show…

That's a good idea, yes, I'll have to try DDG if I hit a reCAPTCHA: Most of my searches don't start with me using advanced operators (except if I'm buying products in Canada because I'll generally use "site:ca" term then), I generally add the advanced operators when a basic search isn't working. And the reCAPTCHA doesn't kick in right away, so I'm not always reminded of the issue. But if I get hit by a reCAPTCHA, I might try DDG now instead. Thanks for the tip!

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

#162

Post by mcswell »

jon_richards wrote: post #126
GordonS wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, this has been the case for a long time, years anyway. I don't know if it goes back quite as far as when they removed the '+' operator tho. But bejesus, this drives me nuts! If I know the double quotes function even exists, then Google should know I actually want to use it as intended - it shouldn't decide "yeah, but maybe you'd like these irrelevant results too!"

I think it’s primarily for people copying and pasting something like an error message, which may have user-specific data in quotes. That should be what “not many results for...” is for, but Google is always trying to optimize away those clicks. Maybe they could add a “programatic” search feature with documented syntax for power users.

Maybe they should go back to +

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

#163

Post by mcswell »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #82
flywheel wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, nope yourself. It seems like a lot of people aren't really thinking this through very much. And that is absolutely the wrong way to approach API development. An API that is being sun-setted should never be removed, because older clients could still use it but sometimes can't be upgraded to newer clients. Removing a v1 API breaks those clients and it's a shitty thing to do to users. Yeah, people should be buildi…

OK, I understand you have an opinion that API design should be done in a certain way (by the way, by "API" I meant like method signatures, not network API, but it could be either). And I understand you disapprove of the word "deprecated" being used to refer to API that is discouraged, usually because it will be no longer supported/going away in the future. But that doesn't change the history of the word. The word "de…

You got a little repetitive there, but yes, I agree: "deprecated" means stop using this because it's going away.

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

#164

Post by mcswell »

chris_f wrote: post #31
mehrdadn wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The plus operator in the page appears to be binary rather than unary. I've never used it. Is that affected as well? (Though I'm confused why AND is necessary. Isn't it implied normally?)

That is correct. AND is added by default and is never necessary in Google. It's a little confusing because fo how Google implemented some of the operators. The boolean + operator in many cases is used in the same way as AND, but Google originally used it to let users to force a specific word to be present in a search result. So a search for Fish +Chips was a search for both words, but 'Chips' MUST be present. The equ…

I think the default is more like AND/OR. If AND were the default, and I put a list of five words in without any 'AND' or 'OR', then I'd expect to get only pages that have all 5 of those words. Now of course google looks for synonyms, unless you put quotes around each search term (which ostensibly blocks synonyms, although as you and others mention, this doesn't always work). But afaict, returned pages don't even necessarily have synonyms for all five search terms. That's especially true for words that don't have much semantic content, but it seems to be true even for very specific words. And that's more like OR.

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

#165

Post by mcswell »

torben-friis wrote: post #137

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.

Back when I was a teenager, I had a slide rule. I can guarantee that a slide rule is still valid, so long as you're not interested in more than two or three significant digits, and you don't want to add or subtract.

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

#166

Post by mcswell »

beefield wrote: post #38
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

> Why doesn't google.com have a comprehensive list of these? It is quite obvious that google does not give a s&it whether I find what I think I want to find. Google is much more interested in 1) serving me ads they think are most profitable and 2) giving me results they think I want.

I'm pretty sure your (1) is correct. I think your (2) should be giving you results they think you should want, as in you shouldn't want to search for a conspiracy theory (even if your goal is to see what the other side is thinking).

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

#167

Post by mcswell »

dragonwriter wrote: post #20
KorfmannArno wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Reminds me of a story I once read about feeding to an optimizing compiler a program to print out the digits of pi.

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

#168

Post by mcswell »

the_jeremy wrote: post #93

All I want is the ability to search for symbols. Symbolhound.com is the only site I've heard that will support that, but it leaves a lot to be desired.

Wow, I hadn't heard of that. I need that kind of search a couple times a week. It may leave a lot to be desired, but it's like democracy: the worst possible thing of its class, except for all the rest.

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

#169

Post by cel1ne »

GordonS wrote: post #75
chris_f wrote: post #25

A few corrections: The + (formerly used to force a term to be present in the result) and ~ (also find synonyms) operators have been deprecated. Google now advises to wrap the word in quotes instead of using the +. Google will also automatically look for synonyms without the use of ~. I have seen 'AROUND(n)' mentioned in many other places working as a proximity operator in Google, but I don't believe that is true and…

Worth mentioning that even if you put a term in double quotes, Google still tries to be too clever - you are not guaranteed to get results that contain your quotes search term :/

Yes, just put a + in front of the double-quotes and you get what you want.

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

#170

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

yourad_io wrote: post #22

Fun fact: googling for -273.15 without double quotes produces no results. You need to quote negative arithmetic values when searching, even if there are no other query parameters. It made me wonder if I was misremembering absolute zero.

Oh, probably because it interprets it as a logical negation; not "negative X", but "remove X from results".
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