There’s so much information on the Internet that even government cyberspies need a hand in rooting out juicy data.
In the Untangling the Web: A Guide to Internet Research, readers are walked through how to find confidential South African spreadsheets and password-rich Russian documents. It’s like Google for Dummies, but for spies!
Which is great, but what if we non-NSA search-scourers want to get better at finding Internet gold? Here’s how.
1. Tailor your search to just one site
If you’re trying to sort through a single site, let the search bar know by typing the word site with a colon followed by the site’s name.
This is particularly useful if you’re trying to sort through WebMD for health knowledge, TheKitchn for awesome recipes, or, ahem, Fast Company for a few productivity hints.
2. Get immediate definitions
You don’t need to head to another dictionary. Google’s got you. Just type “define” followed by a colon and the word you want to look up.
3. Find a specific file type
Use filetype:[jpg, pdf, or other extension] to nab different forms of knowledge, such as professional presentations with “ppt,” academic papers with “pdf,” and lolcats with “jpg.”
4. Limit your results
If you’re looking for primary sources, use the “-” modifying to get around Wikipedia, Quora, or other knowledge aggregators. Like Lifehacker writer Melanie Pinola notes, this is super useful when the word you’re searching after has more than one meaning, like “jaguar -car.”
5. Compare foods
But there are times when Quora can be helpful, such as one user’s recommendation to compare foods with a ‘vs’ indicator:
6. Find an etymology
Word nerds need not labor after word roots; starting your search with “etymology:” will bring up histories for many common words.
If you have any spectacular search hacks, let us know in the comments.
Hat tip: Lifehacker