[Tips] how to use google search efficiently

Tips – How to use Google Search efficiently

I am using Google Search engine almost all the time since 2006 and learned lots of
things to manipulate Google search in much easier way. I know I am little late to share
this and you will have lots of such posts over the internet. But, presentation and
thoughts for the same things are always different for different authors. I would basically
show you the real power of Google Search engine and strong evidence to prove that
why I love and prefer Google Search Only :D

More than 80% internet users use Google Search engines followed by Bing then Yahoo
etc…

Results Taken from statowl.com to show you how Google has captured the search
engine market share :D

Search Engine Total Avg Apr '12 May '12 Jun '12 Jul '12
Google 81.80% 81.92% 83.21% 81.60% 80.64%
Bing 8.37% 8.23% 7.78% 8.54% 8.84%
Yahoo 6.86% 7.15% 6.32% 6.78% 7.18%
Ask 1.50% 1.43% 1.43% 1.52% .59%
AOL .47% 1.26% 1.25% 1.56% 1.75%

Without wasting your time let’s dive into Google’s real power. I will demonstrate every
possible situation with a scenario and how to get benefit of that scenario using Google
Search Engine.

Example 1
You need to know what all things you searched using Google Search engine i.e.
History of what you browsed till date. What you will do?

http://www.aliencoders.com (Alien Coders) Page 1


Answer is simple, either type google.com/history or history.google.com; you will be able
to see the search strings that you used to search using Google Search.
Link for Google History:http://history.google.com (make sure you are logged in using
Google account)

Example 2
What you will do, if you would see a mail in different language? Or somebody sent you
few lines in chat that you didn’t understand and seem Latin & Greek to you? Or
somebody updated their Facebook status in different language and you wish to respond
in the same language?

Once again Google search is there to help you in doing so. Use Google’s inbuilt
Language translator. Here is the link for Google translator: http://translate.google.com/



Example 3
Do you want to know Flight timings?

If you type flights, then it will display you all flights leaving from your location. It gets
your remote location using IP Address. Ex: flights or flight
If you want to know flight from one location to another type flights from location1 to
location2

Ex: flights form Hyderabad to Kolkata

Example 4
Do you want to know my best online dictionary?

Yes, it’s Google again. Just type define: word
Ex: define: obfuscated



Example 5
What if you don’t know the correct spelling or misspelled some words?

Don’t worry now Google is damn smart to rectify it automatically and will display you
result for the correct one. If you didn’t mean what Google shows, still you have option

to search for whatever you typed.

Example 6
Is it rainy season or sunny at Dhanbad? Do you need to know weather forecast
where you live or any place?

1. Type weather only to show weather information where you live ex: weather

2. Type weather for place-name or weather place-name for that particular place. Ex:
weather Redmond or Weather for Dhanbad



Example 7
Do you want to know the time of a place?

1. Type time only to see your local time ex: time

2. Type time in place-name or simply time place-name ex: time in Redmond



Example 8
It’s movie time dude!

Type movie at search box and it will display all movies in all theatres nearby your
places. Ex: movie

movie movie-name will display that movie list in all theatres Ex: movie taken 2



movie movie-name for place-name will display movie in that place in all theatres of that
movie. Ex: movie resident evil retribution for Bangalore

movie for place-name to display all movies in that place in all theatres: movie for City of
Brussels



Example 9
I want to use Google as a converter either its mass converter or volume or digital
storage etc.

Just type subject1 to subject2
i.e. Celcius to farenhite or

Ton to kg or Byte to bit

Example 10
Did you see my online Calculator?
Actually it’s yours also, in real it’s Google’s :P Just type calculator to see what I meant.



Example 11
Do you want an exact search result whatever you have typed?

Then, type phrases in double quotation to do so. Ex: “I am a blogger”

Now, before going ahead, we need to know few terms which will be used during Goggle
Search. These terms may not seem very useful to common users but it will be very
informative and useful for tech savvy and Information Security Community (Bad and
Good both).

 inurl
It will display the pages which will have certain keyword in links i.e. url



Ex: inurl:signup

 allinurl
This will display all links/url which will have all given keywords in their urls. It will be
useful when you need to search only those websites which will meet given criteria.
Like show all links which will have any connection with vim related stuffs under
Linux.
ex: allinurl: linux vim



 intitle
It will allow to search the text used in title of any webpage. Ex: intitle:Linux
If you use more than one word then, it will search the first word in title and other
words anywhere either in title or contents. Ex:intitle: Linux vim grep and check the
result.
If you want to search all the terms in title only, you need to use other option i.e.

allintitle 

 allintitle
It will allow searching all listed words in title of any webpage. Suppose, you wish to
see only those web pages which have CCNA, Questions and TCP keywords in their
title. Ex: allintitle:CCNA Questions TCP



Compare the result with above option i.e. intitle

 intext
It display all results which is being included in intext command and ignores to search
for that keyword in links/urls or titles. So use it wisely. If you wish to see in link or title
too use other options along with it  like intext:help intitle:perl inurl:hack

 allintext
It will display only those pages which will contain all the mentioned words in that web
page. Ex: allintext: map grep perl



 filetype
This will restrict Google to show only those links which will have those filetype in that
urls/links
Suppose you want to find out all doc files over internet or any links which will either
have pdf or ppt and will have LTE keyword in title
Ex: filetype:pdf OR filetype:ppt intitle:LTE

 site
It shows the result for given phrase within given websites only. It is useful when you
wish to search something in a particular website like perl in aliencoders.com.
ex: site:aliencoders.com Perl or
site:aliencoders.com intitle:perl to find all titles having perl in it under
aliencoders.com website



 related
It will list all the pages which are similar to the given website. Sometime we know
about one website and we are looking other useful websites similar to that, by that
time it will be really helpful. Ex: related:naukri.com



 cache
It will display the page that Google has already in its cache. It can be updated one or
outdated one. It will be useful when you want to see something from old site which
may not exist now or have deleted that content.
cache:url-name keyword(optional)

There should not be any gap between cache: and url. If keyword is provided, then it
will highlight those words while displaying the page.
Ex: cache:aliencoders.com

Example 12
Need to search particular file type like doc or pdf or torrent or sql or cfg or php?
What to search filetype:extension
Ex: iron man 2 filetype:torrent

Example 13
Want to search within a particular site of some known file type which some
phrase in it?
Suppose I want to check all doc files under in domain or gov domain which has
confidential word anywhere as title or link or text etc.
Type site: site-name or tld filtype:file-extension keyword
Ex: filetype:doc site:in confidential or check another example of filetype mentioned
above

Example 14
Want to search related pages similar to this site

Try using related:url-name to locate similar websites. There should not be any space
between relate: and site name
Ex: related:facebook.com or related:indiblogger.in

Example 15
Want to ignore something from your search?

Use - ex: highlight important words using double quotes and ignore words using - in
front of that word
i.e. fish “curry” mustard-onion

Example 16
Need to know email id?



All Gmail ids stored in excel sheet and contains IISc. keyword too
intext:@gmail.com filetype:xls IISc

All IISc official ids
intext:@iisc.ernet.in filetype:xls IISc

Official email id of specific person stored in either doc or pdf or xls format
intext:@iisc.ernet.in filetype:xls OR filetype:doc OR filetype:pdf "Anil Kumar Sharma"
or
intext:@iisc.ernet.in filetype:xls OR filetype:doc OR filetype:pdf "AnubhavSinha"

Example 17
Want to find key/patches of software?

Try typing crack:software-name version
Ex: crack:Camtasia Studio v8.0.2.918

Example 18
We need to list all urls which has indexing enabled and contain perl related stuffs
in chm or pdf format.

Using “Index of ” syntax to find sites enabled with Index browsing
Ex: index of /ebooks intext:pdf OR intext:chm perl



How it plays an important role for hacker/crackers/penetration testers?
It can be used to gather the basic information required for further process of hacking or
penetration testing of any websites. According to my experience, this would be the part
of social engineering.
They will not do anything. They will just combine one or more such techniques shown
above to get desired result. Like password file, configuration file, database details,
server details etc.

Some more tips:
 Google search is not case-sensitive, so don’t bother about case stuffs
 Use lesser words to get accurate and more results
 Use web friendly word like headache instead of my head is paining
 Punctuation marks never matter for Google search. (bad news for grammar
pedantic :P )

Source (I got some help from here too!)
http://www.google.com/insidesearch/tipstricks/all.html

Author: Sanjeev Kumar Jaiswal (Jassi)
Email id: admin@aliencoders.com (feel free to mail or comment on this article)
Website: http://www.aliencoders.com
Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/aliencoders
Twitter : http://www.twitter.com/aliencoders


[Tips] how to use google search efficiently

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