POWER SEARCHING TECHNIQUES IN

Prepared & Presented by Samik Mukherjee (December, 2013)

PRIMER
Founded: 15th September, 1997; Larry Page and Sergey Brin Headquartered at Mountain View, CA Original USP: search engine; different from Rediff or Yahoo Global user share (as on September, 2013):
Google: ~ 70% Baidu: ~ 20% Others: ~ 10%

Business diversifications and expansions (since late 2000s) Ventured into Google products (collaborative measures)

HOW GOOGLE WORKS

Google Crawler: A Spider crawling on WWW Operates really really fast Data Updation = Information fed by Google Crawler (Updation frequency increases on National holidays, low internet traffic periods) More hit means higher probability of appearing your website above others Want high on rank? Use extensively searched words in Internet and cross-links Key to swift search: Think like a Google Crawler

UNDERSTANDING SERP
5 2 1

1. Title 2. URL (Uniform Resource Locator) 3. Snippet 4. Links into site

5. Additional Search Options

OFFERS from GOOGLE

Use Google products for getting specific results:
Images Scholar News Books Translate and other

Use region specific information Use additional search options Bound time periods (Google allows customized search option) Use results fitting your requirement; if you need a verbatim, dont go for reading level results

GOOGLE IMAGES: FILTERING RESULTS

Need a logo or picture? And your search results arent quite what you want? Use colour filters in www.images.google.com

Searching on TATA led to this SERP

Same search + colour filtering done

CHOICE OF KEYWORDS
Only ask what you need to know! Google searches EACH AND EVERY keyword Keep your query SIMPLE AND SHORT Dont use the following parts of speech (unless required)
Verbs (is, are, was) Adjectives (good, nice, beautiful) Articles (a, an, the)

No case sensitivity (USE, use, uSe, UsE are all same when searched)

WHAT MAKES THE DIFFERENCE?

Order of words

blue sky results versus sky blue results

Use some special characters viz. + # $ &

SOME USEFUL TECHNIQUES 1

Use inverted commas to club texts (viz. searching for I am Indian and I am Indian will give different results) Myth broken: Use of comma is redundant Bad at spelling? Dont worry Google will correct it for you Searching for uncommon word? Worry not, Google will show its suggestion AND results of your requirement Follow suggestions and trackers

SOME USEFUL TECHNIQUES 2

Use mathematical operators (viz. 256.2546+352.14785) in search box and hit enter Some mathematical operators: + - x / sqrt ^ log log10 Want to know the meaning of Somnambulism? Type define somnambulism (or somnambulism meaning) and click enter Want to know todays INR-USD conversion rate? Type convert INR to USD and click enter Want to convert 65C to F? Type convert celsius to fahrenheit, enter data and hit enter Caution: Google wont tell you when units are incompatible (try 50ml in cm!)

WHEN YOU DONT KNOW WHAT TO DO

Glance over EVERYTHING in SERP (but dont browse everything!) Monitor suggestions-as-you-type (or incremental suggestions) Monitor incremental results as you type Search related results list (refer to bottom portion of SERP) Have a logo or picture and clueless about the company name or source? Paste the picture in Google images and search Have a music score and want composers name? Use Google Search by Voice (experimental)

SOME USEFUL TECHNIQUES 3

Use shortcut key to identify texts (ctrl + F for Windows & CMD + F for Mac)
(Note: With change of browsers, the function works differently. Kindly pay caution while operating on different browsers)

NEVER SKIP words which you dont know

Use remittance in place of immigrants send money home

APPLICATION OF BOOLEAN LOGIC

Code is all about 1 and 0 Use of query syntax
AND: Actually redundant; space = comma = AND + (plus sign): Word succeeding plus sign will be present in ALL results (try +economics) OR: EITHER of the preceding and succeeding keywords will be present (try indian or agriculture) - (minus sign): Words succeeding minus sign will NOT be shown in query results * (asterisk): Wildcard used when you know there is some text but dont know what it is (Caution: Position of asterisk is very important. Pay attention while using it) .. (double periods): Used to limit number range

NOT, NOR, NAND are not recognized by Google. Dont use them

WHAT ACTS BEHIND 0.15 SECONDS

You Google Server

Google doesnt search the actual web, it searches the indexed files

Doc Servers

Index Servers

Google Cache Simply a snapshot of a web page Except some features, all other results are not provided in real time Cache exists only if a page is full-text indexed

DEEP SEARCHING : NEED and FORMAT

Web Organization

Deep Web (or Dark Web)

Visible Web

Little is indexed; need special codes to access

Everything indexed and shown

Micro-irrigation
Micro-irrigation from site: www.ncpahindia.com

DEEP SEARCHING TOOLS - 1

Site: Want information from a SPECIFIC WEBSITE (try industrial policy site: wb.gov.in) Filetype: Want information in a SPECIFIC FORMAT (try industrial policy filetype:pdf) Some filetypes: doc, xls, pdf, jpeg, png, pptx, csv, txt, dat, kml - (minus): Want to omit a keyword from snippet shown normally (try icc cricket) Caution: You must put a space before the minus sign

Remember:
Mixing of operators allowed Put minus operator at first place Multiple minus can be used

DEEP SEARCHING TOOLS - 2

Intext (for very specific searching): Want some text or a string to BE PRESENT in your result (try site:indianchamber.net "economic affairs" intext:finance) Note:
While quoting some text, acknowledge the source Check for credibility Advanced Searching can also be done by application of UI

DEEP SEARCHING TOOLS - 3

Intitle: Word searched in TITLE only (try hybrid cars intitle:mileage) Allintitle: Words or strings searched in title only (try allintitle:hybrid car mileage site: ford.com) Allintext: Words or strings which appear in snippet (try allintext:water air pollution site:envfor.nic.in) Allinanchor: Returns only pages that link to pages with your search terms (anchor terms), BUT NOT in the actual pages (Cant use this with other operators)

LASTLY
Credibility check Incorporate variant data Verify quotes for plagiarism check Identify source using WHOIS database Search one more time, differently

USEFUL LINKS
https://support.google.com/?hl=en http://www.google.com/analytics/learn/ And of course: http://google.com