Bag of Tricks for Effective Google Search
Tips to boost your productivity in online search.
In this post we will see how to use some of the search features provided by Google which will boost your productivity and potentially save hundreds of hours otherwise wasted in finding the content you are looking for. We will be working with a practical example to see and understand how these features work.
During my internship with ITC in 2014, I prepared a slide deck on how to search relevant content on Google quickly. Even today, I find myself heavily using these tricks everyday which I discovered back then. To my surprise, I have found that few people know about them or use them.
At the time I was working on peel-off problem. A layman explanation of the problem statement is, why is it that the top layer of a paperboard gets separated from rest of the paperboard? It was a very specific problem, with very little literature or research available and therefore hard to find. A paperboard usually has 3 layers, each stuck with the other with the help of glue and then compressed to make them stick together…wait…I am not here to talk about paperboard, am I? Lets save my internship work for another day and get back to the topic of search :)
I work, almost exclusively, on Machine Learning problems now and therefore I will reproduce examples relevant for this domain using the same tricks I show in the slide deck below. Also attaching the slide deck for nostalgic reasons :’)
Query: tutorial on logistic regression
Throughout, we will use the query: tutorial on logistic regression, as an example to work with and try out some of the tricks available in google search.
Case 0: Regular Search
When I do a regular search for tutorial on logistic regression, top few results I get are,
Now lets see what more we can do…
Case 1: Searching for a specific type of document or file using filetype
Lets say, what you really want is PDF documents, not really videos or webpages. Just change you search to,
tutorial on logistic regression filetype:pdf
And, here are the results:
Case 2: Searching for exact words/phrases using quotes “”
If you are picky, you may be unsatisfied with the results above because you searched for TUTORIAL ON LOGISTIC REGRESSION! Can’t the stupid search engine understand the EXACT words? Good news is, it can. Here is what you modify your search query to,
“tutorial on logistic regression” filetype:pdf
Now see the magic of quotes,
Case 3: Excluding words or phrases using negation —
But you don’t want SAS related stuff? Okay,
“tutorial on logistic regression” -”SAS” filetype:pdf
Note that for exclusion of unitary words like SAS above quotes around them (“SAS”) are not needed. But you for exclusion of phrases, you need to put them inside quotes.
Case 4: Search within specific sites using site
You don’t trust all the webpages out there and only look at edu sites? Okay,
“tutorial on logistic regression” -”SAS” filetype:pdf site:edu
Case 5: Search documents with your query words in the title using allintitle
You care more about results which have your query words in the title, don’t you? Okay, here you go,
allintitle:”tutorial on logistic regression” -”SAS” filetype:pdf site:edu
Did you notice something interesting in the 6 searches above?
The more strict you get with your search query, the fewer results you get.
That’s intuitive and hence expected but with a very strict query, you might not get any relevant documents at all. E.g. in Case 4, the results are probably not what you are really looking for when searching for tutorial on logistic regression. Case 2 or Case 3 might suit your needs better.
Keep in mind that in the post I showed a specific linear progression of search query, feel free to mix and match to get to what works for you. You may not need all the ammunition for it.
Once you are comfortable with these bag of tricks, do a bit of trial and check to get to what you want.
Bonus 1: Related Webpages
Sometimes you are looking for webpages or websites which have the same kind of content which you like in another webpage or website. Say you browse arxiv.org a lot and would like to find out other sites, you can use
related:arxiv.org
Or you like medium.com
related:medium.com
Bonus 2: Use Image Results
Sometimes you are able to get to what you want much more quickly when you search visually. Say you are looking for deep learning architectures
The results above are certainly useful but sometimes they may not help you to quickly narrow down to the specific results you are after. Go visual!
Isn’t this a much better result to look at when you are searching for specific kind of architecture, you might not remember name of? For me, it certainly is!
These are simple tricks which can make your life much easier. Hope they help. That’s all for this post! Keep searching :D
