Superior Searching - How to Mix Syntax and Anatomy of a Google URL
(Page 13 of 14 )
How to Mix Syntax
Some syntax combinations work very well. Here’s an example to get you started: intitle and site. Say you’d like to get a sense of the forms available from the United States Department of Agriculture; you could run this search:
intitle:form site:usda.gov
And if you want to narrow that down, you could add a keyword, like this:
cattle intitle:form site:usda.gov
Tip: You can put keywords at the beginning or the end of your query, but it’s easier to keep track of them if you put them first.
Remember that the site operator lets you specify subdomains, so if you want to know what kind of forms the National Agricultural Library has on tap, you could run a search like this:
intitle:form site:nal.usda.gov
Another classic combo is intext along with inurl, described on page 64.
Anatomy of a Google URL
As you’ve probably noticed by now, URLs are often long, complicated, and weird. You certainly don’t have to become an expert on what goes into those addresses. Indeed, millions of people live happy lives never wondering why some URLs are eighteen characters and some are longer than Beowulf.
But after you’ve run a Google search, the URL in your browser bar contains some characters that you can change on the fly to refine a quest without taking a long trip to the Advanced Search page. Plus, once you can read URLese, you can fiddle with a string to produce results you can’t get any other way.
The URL for a Google results page can vary depending on the preferences you’ve set, but mostly, they look similar (see page 45 for more on preferences). Say you run a search for the phrase "over the river"; your results URL should look something like Figure 2-13. In addition to your query, the URL contains codes for the language you're surfing and for the number of results per page, both explained below. The rest of the stuff varies wildly and can include information about the browser you're using, the page where you initiated your search (perhaps you ran a Google search from Amazon. com), or other factors Google doesn't reveal.
 | If you've enjoyed what you've seen here, or to get more information, click on the "Buy the book!" graphic. Pick up a copy today!
Visit the O'Reilly Network http://www.oreillynet.com for more online content. |
Next: Changing the Number of Results >>
More Google Optimization Articles
More By OReilly Media
/ 1 
