What is the most important web page on the Internet?
Is it only my opinion or is it factually the most important page?
Factually the single most important web page on the Internet is the landing page at Google.com
The second most important page on the Internet is less well known, do you know what page it is?
Welcome to Google Fu 101
Without a doubt being able to use Google is a differentiator in your online life, I am sure that sometimes you, like me, forget that URL or that operator or howto quickly do this or that. Here is a short list of the most common and most used Google resources and search operators:
1. The second most important web page on the Internet is Google Search Features help page. (Tip: Scroll all the way down)
2. Another useful Google resource page is the Google Advanced Search page.
3. Power search users use operators, these are characters typed into the main search box that allows the user to guide Google, with additional accuracy, to produce the results that the user requires. The most common operators are: ” ” -, + and ~
Anything typed in between the double quotes are matched in results exactly for example: “Worst Company” in South Africa will match the terms worst company but may also include results that do not include the exact match in South Africa.
Then one can use the – (minus) operator to remove keywords from the results, for example worst company -EA that will exclude all results including the words EA in the results. One can use the plus symbol to add together and the
~ is used to also include words that have similar meaning for example fun guide will also include results like fun book, fun howto and fun manual.
4. One of the most used operators is the site: command. What this does is it allows searches like hospitals site:co.za which will return results only in the co.za domain name space, this is still the most effective way of searching only within a certain namespace. You can also use it like this: site:andre.co.za andre height
5. Then of course there are all the functions from the feature website, for example weather: Johannesburg and time: New York
6. Lesser known functions are filetype: I use it frequently as follows filetype: pdf or filetype: avi and then also use movies: Terminator
If you use movies: and Google has your location (set in a cookie) and Google has data about cinemas and schedules in your location, then the next show and time is displayed as well (This is useful if you are in New York, not so much in Pofadder)
7. Translate almost any language into almost any other language
8. The related: function is the next underdog, it is frequently used by power users but not so well marketed. Obviously it displays related websites and used together with operators, this little beauty is well hidden a gem! Take
it out for a drive today.
This covers the basics, or search 101, next time we will chat about more
power search functions that not so much is written about, so watch out for my next article 🙂
