This document provides tips for using Google search more effectively as a developer. It shares 5 tips: using exact phrase search with quotation marks, excluding terms with a minus sign, finding related terms using "related:", searching within a specific file type like PDF, and searching within a specific site. Mastering these Google search tricks can help developers more quickly find code samples, documentation, and solutions to programming problems.

1. BECOME A BETTER
DEVELOPER
Mastering Google Search (I'm using it now)
Ye Win
03/03/2016

2. Are you using Google machine the correct way when it comes to
searching for stuff? If you’re like me, you are using Google daily to
search for a variety of things. However, did you know there was a
way to use Google to find items quicker and easier?
What a lot of people don't realize is that Google has a lot of
powerful tricks hidden up it's sleeve.
Here are some of those commands and how they can be best used
by a developer.

3. Exact Phrase Search
If you wrap part or all of your search with quotation marks, Google
will search for the exact phrase entered, unlike normal where it
searches for the words individually.
As a developer, this can be really useful when searching for
exception strings.
Example
"Failed to parse configuration at: logging.appenders.[0]“
The exact exception text is in the quotations, but I've then thrown
in some extra terms that are relevant to help focus.

4. Google Results:

5. Exclude Term
There can be a lot of overlap in our little world of programming.
Projects with similar names and overloaded terms can make it very
frustrating when combing through search results. It's really easy to
exclude a word from search results though; simply add a "-" before
a word.
Example
Spark Java -Apache
Annoyingly in Java there is sparkjava and Apache Spark. If
searching for the former, you can remove all Apache based results
with ease.

6. Google Results:
Now you can see the results which are not include Apache.

7. Related Terms
Want to know what the alternatives are to a technology? The
related keyword has your back. It expects a URL and will return
websites which have a similar content. In practice, I've found it
useful for bringing up alternative technologies or frameworks, or
finding things which are additive and compatible.
Example
related:mongodb.org

8. Google Results:
We now have a list of similar and alternative NoSQL databases to
MongoDB.

9. File Type
Did you know you can mandate the type of file you want to search
for in Google? This can be really useful when looking for printable
cheatsheets as you can specify PDF files, although this can be
applicable to a host of searches.
Example
Java Beginner filetype:PDF

10. Google Results:
We now have a list of pdf type Java in the results.

11. Search Within a Site
I often find that the search on a website or forum is
terrible. Fortunately, Google can rescue the situation. It's possible
to specify Google specifically search a site or subdomain.
Example
equals vs == in java site:stackoverflow.com

12. Google Results:
All results are from stackoverflow.com

13. Conclusions,
Okay, I will stop my slide after present 5 Google search tricks
especially for developers.
But, there are still a lot of powerful tricks in Google search. You
can refer from in my References slide.
If you want to more powerful at Google search, refer to these
references slide to becoming mastering in Google.

14. You can see what I am up to on:
‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/toyewin
StackOverflow: http://stackoverflow.com/users/4352728/ye-
win
SlideShare: http://www.slideshare.net/mysky14
Email me: yewin29081990@gmail.com
Thank for reading!!

16. References
• http://kimgarst.com/12-quick-and-easy-tips-to-mastering-google-
search
• https://dzone.com/articles/become-a-better-programmer-by-
mastering-
google?edition=138254&utm_source=Spotlight&utm_medium=email&
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