Blogs on the art and science of Googling

September 8, 2008 1:21 PM

Are there any good blogs out there on improving your Googling skills?

I'm talking about the sort of techniques to find information using search engines that make you go "wow, why didn't I think of that?" and open you up to a new way of finding things. It is such a fundamental skill on the internet - surely someone has had to have written one?

posted by vizsla to computers & internet (6 comments total)

Just in case you didn't realize it existed... the official Google blog is full of treasure.
posted by rokusan at 1:26 PM on September 8, 2008

Johnny Long's Google Hacking.
posted by These Premises Are Alarmed at 1:28 PM on September 8, 2008

It's too bad that you can't GOOGLE for things like this, amirite?

You might want to check out the advanced search operators.
posted by shownomercy at 2:11 PM on September 8, 2008

You want to know Google, of course, but if you really want to find stuff online you need to know about other search engines, especially those that search the "invisible web" or "deep web".

Search Engine Guide

Invisible or Deep Web: What it is, How to find it, and Its inherent ambiguity

Research Beyond Google: 119 Authoritative, Invisible, and Comprehensive Resources

99 Resources to Research & Mine the Invisible Web

Deep Web Research blog

The main tip I can give to improve your Google-fu is "use synonyms". Google is actually pretty good these days at pointing you toward stuff that is closer to your topic than your search terms would intuitively suggest. (That's how their relevance algorithm is supposed to work.) But sometimes you need the right term to make the right site bubble to the top. Try a search several ways. If you're searching for something related to a source document, don't be afraid to take a key sentence and just paste that as your search term. Use the site: prefix with country-level domains, e.g. site:uk. If you have enough of a language facility to recognize foreign words (even if you can't read the language), those can be effective search terms that even lead you to English results.
posted by dhartung at 2:18 PM on September 8, 2008 [6 favorites has favorites]

Don't Google for what you're looking for, Google for text you think will appear on the page you want.

They're not always the same.
posted by Mwongozi at 3:48 PM on September 8, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Google Blogoscoped
posted by clueless22 at 6:05 AM on September 9, 2008