http://deborahhirsch.com/media/web-search-assists-en-espanol/ The best and wurst of the Hirsch-Weiner clan Sat, 29 May 2010 20:26:51 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 http://deborahhirsch.com/media/web-search-assists-en-espanol/comment-page-1/#comment-54 Kynan Sun, 25 May 2008 17:28:57 +0000 http://deborahhirsch.wordpress.com/?p=83#comment-54 I don't search in spanish, and I don't use autocomplete features, but I do do a LOT of searching. I've become very adept at knowing just what words to pick out, and what features to use. There are a few that many people know (like using quotes to get a phrase). There are also a lot of other less-used ones - like you can replace a number of words in a phrase with an asterisk: so "Star * Episode" (quoted) will give you results for both "Star Wars Episode" and "Star Trek Episode". There are a number of common words that are automatically excluded from a search, so you can use + before the word to force it (and not any variations, like the plural) to be used. Similarly, you can use - before a word to look for pages that don't have that term (Google's example is "bass -music" if you're looking for the fish). Or you can use ~ before a word to look for that word or its synonyms. One of my favorites is "site:". So if I want to search the UW's engineering web pages, I add site:engr.wisc.edu to my query; all results will be from www.engr.wisc.edu or cae.engr.wisc.edu or any other similar domains. There's also number ranges ($150..$200), conversions (10 miles in kilometers), definitions (define:phenotype), file type searches (eg filetype:pdf), and a lot more. Get in the habit of using them (and picking the right words for your search terms), and you'll get much better results. Check out these sites for more information on a many of these: http://www.google.com/help/operators.html http://www.google.com/help/cheatsheet.html I don’t search in spanish, and I don’t use autocomplete features, but I do do a LOT of searching. I’ve become very adept at knowing just what words to pick out, and what features to use. There are a few that many people know (like using quotes to get a phrase). There are also a lot of other less-used ones – like you can replace a number of words in a phrase with an asterisk: so “Star * Episode” (quoted) will give you results for both “Star Wars Episode” and “Star Trek Episode”. There are a number of common words that are automatically excluded from a search, so you can use + before the word to force it (and not any variations, like the plural) to be used. Similarly, you can use – before a word to look for pages that don’t have that term (Google’s example is “bass -music” if you’re looking for the fish). Or you can use ~ before a word to look for that word or its synonyms.
One of my favorites is “site:”. So if I want to search the UW’s engineering web pages, I add site:engr.wisc.edu to my query; all results will be from http://www.engr.wisc.edu or cae.engr.wisc.edu or any other similar domains. There’s also number ranges ($150..$200), conversions (10 miles in kilometers), definitions (define:phenotype), file type searches (eg filetype:pdf), and a lot more. Get in the habit of using them (and picking the right words for your search terms), and you’ll get much better results.
Check out these sites for more information on a many of these:
http://www.google.com/help/operators.html
http://www.google.com/help/cheatsheet.html

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