by Karelle Scharff

The other day as I was searching Google for a scrap of esoterica —on which subject Google reported several thousand entries—I reflected on the question, “what did we do before Google?” Well, we poked around in encyclopedias, dictionaries, telephone directories, and the reference section of the library, oh and maybe a few bookstores too. And after a day of poking we may have come out with a paragraph or two on the subject. Now we can find thousands of entries as a reward for typing a few words.
In a previous article I talked about how to discern the validity of a particular webpage. Perhaps we should back up one step and talk about how to search. There are dozens of search engines out there. Some, like Google, Bing, and Yahoo are generalized search engines. There are other search engines and directories that are about narrowly focused topics, like medicine, construction, and law.
Search technique is pretty much the same whether you’re looking at general or specific search engines. The trick is to come up with their right keywords and then to eliminate the irrelevant information.
Let’s say you want to learn to knit a scarf. If you enter just the word [scarf] in Google, on the first page you get information about tying silk scarves, a Wikipedia article on a scarf joint (joining pieces of wood or metal end-to-end), shopping results for scarves, an article about a woman charged with pulling the headscarf of a Muslim woman in a southern Chicago suburban grocery store. Add the word knit [knit scarf], and you get more what you’re looking for: a number of how-to articles and videos on knitting a scarf. There are still a number of entries about shopping that I didn’t want to include, so after the words [knit scarf] I added a minus sign (-), and then the word shopping [knit scarf -shopping]. That didn’t get rid of the “shopping results.” So what’s true in any shopping result? There’s a dollar sign ($)! So instead of [knit scarf -shopping], I used [knit scarf -$]. That eliminated shopping results, or at least most of them. So the idea is to start with a few well-chosen words, words that are likely to appear on the resulting webpages. If the first set of results doesn’t include what you’re looking for, it may give you ideas for what words to add to get closer to your goal.

By adding my zip code [knit scarf 80302], I can find local stores and organizations that could help me in my quest to learn to knit a scarf. Do you like Thai Food? Type the words [Thai restaurant Boulder Colorado] into Google and then drool over the results.
If I wanted to search for [scarf knitting patterns], I could just search for those words, but the results will include pages that have those three words on them but not necessarily together. If I want to search specifically for those words, then I would put quote marks around that phrase, [“scarf knitting patterns”], and I would get just pages that include that phrase. If you do this and find that your results are too limited, remember that the search engine is looking for exactly that phrase and won’t find pages featuring the phrase [“patterns for scarf knitting”]. And if you search for [“Joe Public”] you won’t find [“Joe Q. Public”].

You can limit your search to a particular site by including the phrase [site:domainname], for instance, [knit scarf site:about.com]. If you only wanted video of knitting scarves you could phrase it like this: [knit scarf site:YouTube.com].

There are lots of other tricks to limit or expand a search, whole books are written about the subject. Check out Google Hacks: Tips & Tools for Finding and Using the World’s Information (http://www.amazon.com/Google-Hacks-Finding-Worlds-Information/dp/0596527063/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1262964020&sr=1-1).

Here are some webpage references for more information:
http://www.google.com/support/websearch/?ctx=web
http://lifehacker.com/339474/top-10-obscure-google-search-tricks
http://www.marcandangel.com/2007/07/25/7-clever-google-tricks-worth-knowing/
http://www.techradar.com/news/internet/web/101-google-tips-tricks-and-hacks-462143
http://www.geekology.co.za/blog/2009/02/advanced-google-search-hacks-and-tricks/

Have fun googling (or binging or yahooing).
Please remember to balance your children’s lives (and yours) with activities in the great out-of-doors! Use google to find out how!

Karelle Scharff, information technologist and the owner of Best MacSolutions is an Apple certified help desk specialist and a member of Apple Consultants Network (www.bestmacsolutions.com), based in Ward. She provides training, service and support to small businesses, home-based business and individuals. Questions about classes or Macs? Call her at (303) 459-3363.