Shave time off your Web searches by using operators

Nobody wants to spend time scrolling through thousands of search results to find the page that contains the information they're looking for. In fact, few people bother looking beyond the first page of 10 results, choosing instead to recraft their search phrase and try again. But with the help of a few search operators, you can increase substantially the chances that you'll find what you're looking for on your first search try. (Note: not all of these work in every search engine.)

Restating the Obvious Operators
I'll wager you know all about using the plus sign (+) to search for two terms appearing together, the minus sign (-) to find pages that contain one term but not another, the asterisk (*) wildcard to search for a term along with any other word, and quotes ("blah de blah") to find an exact phrase. Here's another search character you might find handy: Place a tilde (~) directly in front of your search term to find pages with words similar to the term in question. So searching ~inexpensive laptop will return pages that have the term "cheap laptop," "affordable laptop," and "low-cost laptop" as well.

Many of my favorite Web sites have terrible site-search boxes. I usually have a much better chance of finding what I'm looking for on the site by going to Google or another search engine, and entering my search term along with site:www.thesitename.com (or .org, .edu, etc.) Here are some of my other favorite search limiters:

define:word to return a definition;
link:url to find pages that contain a link to a specific site or page;
inurl:searchterm (or allinurl:searchterm) to retrieve pages whose URL contains a specific word or phrase;
intitle:searchterm (or allintitle:searchterm the find pages with the word or phrase in their title; and,
info:url (or id:url) to get information about the page.

Javascript Bonus: Curious about when the page you're on was last updated? Just type javascript:alert(document.lastModified) in the address bar and press Enter to see the date and time in a pop-up window.

More Search Helpers
If you're looking for a weather report, simply enter weather place or zip code and press Enter to see the temperature, conditions, and forecast for that locale. To keep adult-oriented content out of the results, use safesearch: searchterm. And to see pages similar to another page, type related: url.

Tomorrow: Five quick-and-easy Microsoft Excel formatting tricks.

[mjhillman]

I tried the "javascript:alert(document.lastModified) " on my own web site that has not been update din months and it reutrned the current date and time.

[doreilly]

Unfortunately, the javascript doesn't work on pages with dynamic elements, which "update" everytime the page is loaded. I'm looking for a way to disable the dynamic content long enough to run the javascript to get the date and time of its true last update. I'll post the solution if/when I find it.

[lynxss]

An alternative is to search higher quality content if you are looking for something specific and time is of the essence. A researcher might search science.gov for the best content from federally funded tax payer paid for research or scitopia.org for some of the best peer reviewed papers from the most respected societies or lexus nexus for law info. Why bother wading through 1000's of blog hits and personal websites from every tom dick and harry when you're trying to find something reputable and time is an issue. Google and MSN may be fine for the average user looking for the latest celebrity news but not for a professional researcher, paralegal, or journalist where time is money and quality of information far out weighs quantity.

[samson10]

Well the "javascript:alert(document.lastModified) " doesn't work well with most webpages, its will work with any image on a page.

[dsarokin]

Good list of search tips!

Just wanted to point to another pretty sophisticated use of syntax from the old Google Answers site:

https://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=565252
Tricky Google Search Syntax Needed

Should be of interest to folks here.

David