Search

Soople

October 12, 2004

Soople is an easy-to-use front-end to many of Google’s advance search features. For example, searching multiple cooking sites for an artichoke recipe is as simple as typing in “artichoke” and selecting “cooking” from the drop-down menu. The actual Google syntax for this search is “artichoke site:allrecipes.com | site:epicurious.com | site:foodtv.com | site:kraftfoods.com | site:cooks.com | [...]

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Four Things Yahoo Can Do

September 21, 2004

Although Google.com is often considered the killer search engine, there are a number of search tricks that Yahoo.com can perform that Google can’t. For example, in Yahoo you can narrow your search results to XML/RSS feeds via a file type selector on the Advanced Search page. For more Yahoo tips, read best-selling author Tara Calashain’s [...]

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Google Sets

September 7, 2004

Google Sets is an online tool from Google Labs that creates lists of similar items from a small starter list. For example, enter “bluebird, eagle, sparrow, lark, hawk” and get a list of fifteen (or more) birds. Although its uses are limited only by your imagination, students and writers can use Google Sets to spur [...]

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Finding Official Websites

August 4, 2004

To find the website of a tourist attraction or other well-known place (such as Yellowstone Park, Leaning Tower of Pisa, Big Ben or Disneyland) try adding the word “official” to your search phrase. For example, searching for “Empire State Building official” puts you just a few clicks away from information about tickets and tours.

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Google Local

June 13, 2004

Google Local offers a local search for businesses and services by keyword and zip code, or city and state. For example, you can search for coffee (or Starbucks) using either your city and state or zip code. Each result is linked to Mapquest driving directions, or you can see all the results plotted on a [...]

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Search Engine Robots

June 8, 2004

If you have a website and occasionally look at your site traffic logs, you may notice visits from robots with funny names like Slurp, Scooter, or GoogleBot. These automated programs are search engine robots that crawl the Web looking for pages to add to their search data bases. To learn which robots belong to which [...]

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News Search Engines

May 18, 2004

News and current events can be found in a wide variety of websites, from local and national newspaper sites to personal blogs, portals and search engines. Here are seven popular news search engines that aggregate reports from a variety of sources: Google News Yahoo News Alta Vista News All the Web News MSN News Daypop [...]

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Natural Langues Search Engines

November 25, 2003

In contrast to boolean-based search engines, which use the logic operators “and” and “or” to define searches, natural language search engines use plain, old human English. So feel free to ask “Why is the sky blue?” or “Why does the dryer eat my socks?” Three examples of natural language search engines are Ask Jeeves (), [...]

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Address Bar Searches

November 11, 2003

In addition to the search button on your browser, both Internet Explorer and Netscape will perform a search if you enter “?” followed by a search term into the address bar. To specify which search engine to use, in Netscape choose Edit/Preferences/Internet Search. In Internet Explorer, select Search/Customize/Auto Search Settings.

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Get Better Search Results

January 7, 2003

To get better results from your Internet searches, try the tips and tutorials at these four sites: Google Help Central, Search Engine Watch, Search the Internet: Tips from UC Berkeley Library and Bare Bones 101 from University of South Carolina.

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