 | | Eden Weingart | |
| Tim Herrera Smarter Living Editor |
| This week I've invited S.L. contributor Whitson Gordon to teach us some advanced Google techniques. |
| Like it or not, Google is most people's portal to the internet. And when you're searching for something simple — like the latest news about Iran — Google will usually get you what you want on the first try. But if you're trying to find something a bit more niche, you may need to do some digging. Here are a few tricks to keep up your sleeve that will make life easier. |
| Narrow your search to a specific time period |
| If your head is spinning after that last one, here's an easy tip for you. Occasionally, search results will consist of older articles that have ranked on a given topic, but haven't been updated to include recent changes. If you encounter this problem, you can put a date restriction on the results by clicking the Tools button under Google's search bar, and then clicking the "Any Time" drop-down. You can narrow your results to the previous week, month, year, or a custom time frame. |
| Search your favorite sites with the "site:" operator |
| If you're looking for an article you read a while back, but can't find now — or if you specifically want to see what one of your most trusted sites has to say about a topic — you can use the site: operator to limit your search to that specific publication. (This is especially useful for sites that don't have a search function — though it's often better than a site's built-in search bar, too.) |
| Let's say I want to read about the Iran nuclear deal, but I prefer coverage from The New York Times. Instead of just Googling US iran deal for the latest news, I can search site:nytimes.com iran deal to see coverage only from The Times. This also allows me to see everything The Times has done on the topic going back weeks or months, rather than my results getting cluttered with versions of today's news from other publications. |
| Add search shortcuts to your browser's address bar |
| Ready for a more advanced lesson? Tricks like the site: operator are great, but they take a while to type out — especially if you search for Times content regularly. You can save yourself precious seconds on every search by creating a short keyword for bits of text you search regularly, if your browser supports it, and most do. That way, instead of typing site:nytimes.com every time, you can just type nyt in your browser's address bar, add your search terms, and get right to the good stuff. |
| To do this, perform an example search on Google, then copy the URL from the address bar. Using the above example, my URL is: |
| https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Anytimes.com+iran+deal |
| This is what we'll use to create our shortcut. In Chrome, right-click the address bar, choose "Edit Search Engines," and click "Add" to create a new one with nyt as the keyword. In Firefox, right-click the Bookmarks Bar and create a new bookmark instead with nyt as the keyword. |
| Paste the search URL you copied earlier into the "Search Engine" or "Location" box, and replace your search terms with %s (making sure to leave in any terms you want to keep as part of the keyword). So, since I want my nyt shortcut to search site:nytimes.com and whatever search terms I add, my URL would look like this: |
| https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Anytimes.com+%s |
| See how I replaced iran+deal with %s in the URL? Now, whenever I type nyt into the address bar, I can search The New York Times for any terms I want. |
| I use this for all kinds of common searches: sites I like (nyt searches site:nytimes %s), authors I trust (jk searches Jolie Kerr %s), or — if you want to get really advanced — other URL tricks, like getting driving directions from Google Maps (http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&q=from+123+main+street+to+%s). |
| Find the source of a photo with reverse image search |
| Finally, not all searches are made up of words. Sometimes, it can be handy to know where a certain photo came from, or to find a larger version of it. You probably know you can type a few words to find a photo with Google's Image Search, but you might not have realized it works in the other direction too: Drag an image into Image Search and Google will find other versions of that photo for you. |
| Google isn't the only site that has this feature, either. TinEye is a similar tool with a few more options, if you're trying to find where the image first appeared. EBay's iPhone and Android apps also let you search by image, which is useful if you're trying to find a rare piece of china with no markings, or something like that. It doesn't always work, but when you're in a bind, it's worth a shot — and if nothing else, it may give you another clue to add to your search terms. |
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