Google 101 - Just Say No
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Just Say No
Google doesn’t understand the word NOT, a programming command familiar to techies and parents of two-year-olds. But it does let you use a minus sign (or dash) to indicate that you don’t want a certain term to appear in your results. For example, if you type—
"Ben Affleck" –"Jennifer Lopez"
—then Google gives you only pages that contain mentions of “Ben Affleck” without “Jennifer Lopez.”
Tip: The minus sign must appear directly before the word or phrase you want to exclude. If you put a space after the symbol, Google ignores it. Do, however, put a space before the minus sign.
Frequently Asked Question: Case Sensitivity
Does Google care if I capitalize my search words?
No. Some search engines, including those on many intranets (private Web sites), are case sensitive, meaning they search for your terms based on how you capitalize the words. In a case-sensitive word, the query "ALFRED HTCHCOCK" woud not find Web pages containg the term "Alfred Hitchcock", "alfred hitchcock", or "aLfREd hiTChCoCk".
Googe, on the other hand, doesn’t care about captazaton. If you search for Pugs, pugs, PUGS, or even pUGs, you get the same results. Give your pinkies a rest and type your queries in all lower-case letters.
This negation trick is most useful when you are searching for a term, like compact, that has more than one meaning. (Cocktail party trivia: These words are called homographs.) If you want results about political agreements like the Mayflower compact, which have nothing to do with small cars or makeup cases or CDs, try something like:
compact –car –makeup -disc
In addition to weeding out homographs, the minus sign is also handy when you’re searching for people or places that share the same name, and you want results for only one. For example, when you need to make sure that a search for William Perry, the former defense secretary, does not include results for William Perry, the former defensive tackle for the Chicago Bears, try this:
"William Perry" –"the Refrigerator"
Similarly, if you want to exclude reams of pages focusing on one particular aspect of your subject, like posters of The Refrigerator, go for:
"William Perry" "The Refrigerator" –poster
Just Say Yes
Because Google ignores certain common words (described above), it sometimes misinterprets a phrase. For example, omen and The Omen are not the same thing. If a common word or number is critical to your search, you can tell Google to include it. Simply place a plus sign (+) directly in front of the term you want to include, like this:
+the omen
This search gives you results for hundreds of thousands of pages that mention the classic devil-baby movie.
Tip: Another way to force Google not to ignore little words is to use quotes, as described on page 20. For example, if you put quotes around “of thee I sing,” Google gives you pages with the whole phrase, not just the words thee and sing.
Getting Lucky
After the Google Search button, the most prominent feature of Google’s home page is the I’m Feeling Lucky button. It’s enticing—does it mean you can win the lot-tery?—but it doesn’t tell you what it really does. In fact, the Lucky button takes you directly to the first Web page that you’d see in the listings if you clicked the regular Search button (Figure 1-5). In other words, the Lucky button operates on the premise that it can guess where you want to go.
The Lucky button is a fabulous click saver when you’re looking for something fairly obvious, like the examples in Figure 1-5. On the other hand, the Lucky button is more like roulette if you’re searching for something obscure, like "purple umbrellas", or something generic, like "pot roast recipes", because so many pages can seem equally relevant.
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