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13 years 11 months ago #34164 by sose
I made up a publication for a local daily on the use of google tools online, now I am working on a seminar for some professors in my neibourghood on how best to use Google for optimal research results, plus if you know other tools for research online please feel free to contribute after reading the publication below. have a superb read!!!



GOOGLE’S MOST MAGICAL TOOLS ONLINE

Many Internet browsers seem not to know how to use Google effectively. Most Internet browsers don’t know 10 percent of the facilities in Google search engine. They just type what they want in the search bar and there they go. Once you figure out the best ways to use Google, it will be very beneficial to you. This can come in handy when you want a fast solution because some questions can be answered easily by just Googling. Google is about the fasted website to access because of its simplicity and the absence of graphics and flash work with averages of about 1.2 million individual searches daily. It is the Internet’s most reliable tool for research. At the same time Google rakes in a lot of income for its owners as CBS , ABC and NBC news agencies in the US combine cannot match its income annually, making the owners among the riches people in the world . It has a search robot that crawls into peoples websites and caches their pages even though you can block Google from crawling into your site. Billions of cached pages are captured into Google’s database making the owners the most informed persons in the world. What are they going to do with all those information in their possession? That is the same question the FBI director is pondering on everyday.

Founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were students at Stanford University, Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. Google search engine looks at its own version or copy of the web to get your required search result. Every search engine creates its own version of the Internet called an index. The index of a search engine determines the size of the search engine. Google has the highest index hence it is the largest search engine today. The entire web is bigger than any search engine index. The search engines build their index using special software known as a crawler or spider. The spider crawls across the web, adding web site pages it visits to the list of pages in its index. It is capable of reading texts on a web page and finding links to other pages too. This is how the crawler travels across the entire web constantly finding new or modified pages of the sites visited to add or update in its index. What it then means is once a web user enters a search query into the search engine; the search engine searches its index to find pages matching the search query. The pages are sort into specific ranking order of closeness using special algorithm.


Google is a researcher’s goldmine. The US police uses Google phonebook as street map to detect crime locations and a lot of security agencies use Google earth to get live pictures of locations around the world . In addition, the Google language tool can be used to translate text from English to many other languages and vice versa. You can even customize your Google home page to relate to you in Hausa. Many organizations in the US use Google calendar to plan their yearly activities. Just type in Google calendar in the search bar then create an account for Google calendar or login if you already have a Gmail account and you can start planning your life minute by minute. The question now is, how do we effectively utilize Google for fast retrieval of required information.

Let’s say you want to search about “the role of Fashola in the economic development of Lagos”. I know this is an interesting topic because the magician is transforming Lagos State. But let us do a search anyway. (Fashola is a governor in Lagos State, Nigeria)

Step 1: Determine your question's prime subject(s)

The subjects in this matter are Fashola, Economic Development and Lagos. A Google search for Lagos will turn up 25.4 million results while a search for Fashola turns up 7600 and that of economic development is 82.7 million results. Intersection of said results can be done with a search for Fashola Economic Development Lagos for about 2700 results.

Step 2: Go further than page one.
Therefore, you start looking at the results you are getting. You go through the Google pages and cannot find any answer. Guess what? There is a page two, and your answer could be in page 9. It is okay to nest in a few pages by default.

Step 3: Use caches when you only need the text of the page.
This is where the "Cached" link becomes valuable. It will still show you the text (which is what we want) sometimes without the images.


Step 4: Evaluate results and determine what went wrong.
What if the search does not really tell me much about the role of Fashola in economic development but much political stuff.

Suppose I want to find out an article I remembered which I read a long time ago. It told me the economic achievements of Fashola in Lagos and even included what I needed to type in detail.

I was also getting many results/returns from Fashola’s campaign activities that I did not care to get. Maybe I need to filter out those as well. Let us start to assemble a Google search string based on what we want.

Step 5: Create a new query string based on what you want.
I want to get results for:
An article about Fashola’s role in economic development in Lagos that does not include party campaign.

Query string:
article "Fashola" economic development -"party campaign"
That will exclude most campaign activities in the search.


The caches for the third and fourth items from your Google query are going to return items you want. Still, suppose you cannot find that specific item you were looking for. Let us try one more time.

Step 6: Adjust queries to remove keywords that you are not certain of and search specific to a site.

I remember which website I found the article, it was on www.ngrguardiannews.com .

I want to get results for:
An article about Fashola’s role in the economic development of Lagos. I want to search specific to http://www.ngrguardiannews.com.com./

Query string:
article economic development "Fashola" Lagos site:ngrguardiannews.com.

This search will not go beyond guardian newspaper and very useful information about Fashola’s role in economic development of Lagos would be retrieved


Step 7: Phrase Searching:
Using quotes around words, "like this", is called phrase searching and very well may be the most powerful searching method for most of the items you are looking for. Especially when you throw in the asterisk for a term you may not know.

Do a Google search for: "Internet activities in Nigeria ethics and best practice" to see what I mean (include the quotes).

Phone and Location:
An entire tutorial can be done on this, mainly because it is an easy way to make side cash to find out an online person's real identity. Some people have been doing it for years.

phonebook: lastname ST
Alternatively, as an example:
rphonebook: Bode George

Note: Google and other server web links are bound to change since this write up. Please be aware that if you click on a link, it very well may not exist. This is merely meant as a tutorial to help people use Google.



In addition, Google supports several advanced operators, which are query words that have special meaning to Google. Typically, these operators modify the search in some way, or even tell Google to do a very different type of search. For instance, "link:" is a special operator, and the query [link: www.google.com ] does not do a normal search but instead finds all web pages that have links to www.google.com .

Several of the more common operators use punctuation instead of words, or do not require a colon. Among these operators are OR, "" (the quote operator), - (the minus operator), and + (the plus operator). More information on these types of operators is available on the Basics of Search page on Google site. Many of these special operators are accessible from the Advanced Search page, but some are not. Below is a list of all the special operators Google supports.

Alternate query types

Cache: If you include other words in the query, Google will highlight those words within the cached document. For instance, [cache:www.google.com web] will show the cached content with the word "web" highlighted.

This functionality is also accessible by clicking on the "Cached" link on Google's main results page.

The query [cache:] will show the version of the web page that Google has in its cache. For instance, [cache: www.google.com ] will show Google's cache of the Google homepage. Note there can be no space between the "cache:" and the web page URL.


Link: The query [link:] will list web pages that have links to the specified webpage. For instance, [link: www.google.com ] will list web pages that have links pointing to the Google homepage. Note there can be no space between the "link:" and the web page URL.

This functionality is also accessible from the Advanced Search page, under Page Specific Search > Links.


Related: The query [related:] will list web pages that are "similar" to a specified web page. For instance, [related:www.google.com] will list web pages that are similar to the Google homepage. Note there can be no space between the "related:" and the web page URL.

This functionality is also accessible by clicking on the "Similar Pages" link on Google's main results page, and from the Advanced Search page, under Page Specific Search > Similar.

Info: The query [info:] will present some information that Google has about that web page. For instance, [info:www.google.com] will show information about the Google homepage. Note there can be no space between the "info:" and the web page URL.

This functionality is also accessible by typing the web page URL directly into a Google search box.

Other information needs

Define: The query [define:] will provide a definition of the words you enter after it, gathered from various online sources. The definition will be for the entire phrase entered (i.e., it will include all the words in the exact order you typed them).

Stocks: If you begin a query with the [stocks:] operator, Google will treat the rest of the query terms as stock ticker symbols, and will link to a page showing stock information for those symbols. For instance, [stocks: intc yhoo] will show information about Intel and Yahoo. (Note you must type the ticker symbols, not the company name.)


Query modifiers

Site: If you include [site:] in your query, Google will restrict the results to those websites in the given domain. For instance, [help site:www.google.com] will find pages about help within www.google.com . [help site:com] will find pages about help within .com url. Note there can be no space between the "site:" and the domain.

This functionality is also available through Advanced Search page, under Advanced Web Search > Domains.

Allintitle: If you start a query with [allintitle:], Google will restrict the results to those with all of the query words in the title. For instance, [allintitle: Google search] will return only documents that have both "Google" and "search" in the title.

This functionality is also available through Advanced Search page, under Advanced Web Search > Occurrences.

Intitle: If you include [intitle:] in your query, Google will restrict the results to documents containing that word in the title. For instance, [intitle:google search] will return documents that mention the word "Google" in their title, and mention the word "search" anywhere in the document (title or no). Note there can be no space between the "intitle:" and the following word.

Putting [intitle:] in front of every word in your query is equivalent to putting [allintitle:] at the front of your query: [intitle:google intitle:search] is the same as [allintitle: google search].

Allinurl: If you start a query with [allinurl:], Google will restrict the results to those with all of the query words in the url. For instance, [allinurl: google search] will return only documents that have both "Google" and "search" in the URL.

Note that [allinurl:] works on words, not URL components. In particular, it ignores punctuation. Thus, [allinurl: foo/bar] will restrict the results to page with the words "foo" and "bar" in the url, but won't require that they be separated by a slash within that url, that they be adjacent, or that they be in that particular word order. There is currently no way to enforce these constraints.

This functionality is also available through Advanced Search page, under Advanced Web Search > Occurrences.

Inurl: If you include [inurl:] in your query, Google will restrict the results to documents containing that word in the url. For instance, [inurl:google search] will return documents that mention the word "google" in their url, and mention the word "search" anywhere in the document (url or no). Note there can be no space between the "inurl:" and the following word.

Putting "inurl:" in front of every word in your query is equivalent to putting "allinurl:" at the front of your query: [inurl:google inurl:search] is the same as [allinurl: google search].


This functionality is also available if you search just on the stock symbols (e.g. intc yahoo) and then click on the "Show stock quotes" link on the results page.

Local search - Visit Google Local enter the area you want to search and the keyword of the place you want to find. For example, typing: restaurant would display local restaurants.
Find weather - Type weather followed by a zip code or city and state to display current weather conditions and forecasts for upcoming days.
Track airline flight - Enter the airline and flight number to display the status of an airline flight and its arrival time. For example, type: delta 123 to display this flight information if available.
Track packages - Enter a UPS, FedEx or USPS tracking number to get a direct link to track your packages.
Pages linked to you - See what other web pages are linking to your website or blog by typing link: followed by your URL. For example, typing link:http://www.abuzaria.com displays all pages linking to abuzaria.
Find PDF results only - Add filetype: to your search to display results that only match a certain file type. For example, if you wanted to display PDF results only type: "dell xps" filetype:pdf -- this is a great way to find online manuals.
Stocks - Quickly get to a stock quote price, chart, and related links by typing the stock symbol in Google. For example, typing: msft will display the stock information for Microsoft.
Google Voice- This service allows you to give out one number and receive calls at any one of the phones you currently used. For example, if I have a phone at my desk that rings when 111-222-3333 is called and my cell number is 111-222-2323, and my home number is 111-222-1515 — anyone wanting to get in touch with me might need to call any one of the three numbers. With Google Voice, I get one number and register each of my existing numbers to it, so that I have to give out only the Google Voice number. This way when any contact calls the new number, all the phones I have configured to work with the service will ring.
If my cell number or provider changes (and the number cannot be ported), I register those new numbers with Google Voice and none of my contacts need to be updated. It also can be quite useful for those people with only a cell phone. You can configure a second number, perhaps an office phone, and configure it not to ring. Then, if your cell battery was to fail or you have no service, you could send calls to the second number temporarily.
Another enhanced feature in Google Voice is Groups. Grand Central allows four groups for call types: Work, Friends, Family, and Other. Most of the time, these works quite well. However, in the new release, Google allow users to add their own groups. Each group can have its own settings (such as greetings, call screening, or call announcement).

Google Docs & Spreadsheets
Google Docs & Spreadsheets is a free web-based word processing and spreadsheet program that allows you to create and edit documents from anywhere and collaborate with multiple people at the same time. You can take advantage of Google Docs & Spreadsheets to coordinate your group’s assignments, access your family to-do list from work or home, or work with remote colleagues on a new business plan. Import existing documents and spreadsheets, or create new ones from scratch.

Google Pack
This is a free collection of essential software to help users browse the web faster, remove spyware and viruses, organize photos, and more with useful programs from Google and other companies like Adobe and Symantec. You can download and install the entire Google Pack in just a few clicks, and the included Google Updater helps you discover new programs and keep your current software up to date.
Google Alerts
Google Alert helps you get email automatically when there are new Google results for your search terms. Google currently offer three types of alerts: News, Web, and News & Web.
• News Alert: email notification about new articles that appear in the top 10 results of your Google News search.
• Web Alert: email notification for new web pages that appear in the top 20 results for your Google web search.
• News & Web Alert: email notification when new articles related to your search term make it into the top 10 results for Google News search, or the top 20 results for a Google web search.
Google Blog Search
Google Blog Search is the easiest way to search for blog content on the web. Using the same technology that powers Google’s web search, Google Blog Search provides fresh, relevant search results from millions of feed-enabled blogs. Users can search for blog posts, blog names, authors, or a specific date range. Google Blog Search also features Google’s Safe Search technology, giving users control over the content of their search results.
Google Book Search
Google Book Search is an index of book content that makes it easy to find books that interest you. Like a card catalog, it helps you learn where to get the full book from a bookstore or a library. Use the Google Book Search homepage to get only book results, or Google.com to see book results as part of your regular search results. Google Book Search makes the full text of millions of books (including out of print and public domain books) instantly searchable, and makes those books discoverable. For authors and publishers, it means that millions of books are instantly discoverable – and able to be purchased. Google Book Search acts as a free marketing program that protects copyright while dramatically expanding the potential audience for, in theory, every book in the world.
Google Language Tools
Search for web content in any of more than 40 languages including searches in the three major languages in Nigeria, or by country domain (157 at last count). You can also translate text to and from several languages or translate a web page by submitting a URL. Google also provide links to Google.com in more than 100 languages and links to all of the current country domains.
Personalized Search
Personalized Search ranks Google search results based on what’s most relevant to an individual user. The Web History feature of Personalized Search enables users to view and manage all of their web activity. Over time, this information personalizes future searches by bringing results closer to the top when it’s clear they are the most relevant to a searcher.
Google Scholar
Find scholarly literature (peer-reviewed papers, theses, preprints, abstracts, technical reports) from a wide variety of academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories and universities and across the web. As with Google Web Search, Google Scholar presents search results in order of relevance to your query, so the most useful references should appear at the top of the page. This relevance ranking takes into account the full text of each article as well as the article’s author, the publication in which the article appeared and how often it has been cited in scholarly literature. Google Scholar also automatically analyzes and extracts citations and presents them as separate results, even if the documents they refer to are not online, so search results may include citations of older works and seminal articles that appear only in books or other offline publications.

Blogger
This leading web-based free publishing tool gives people the ability to publish to the web instantly via weblogs, or “blogs” — web pages comprised of short, informal, frequently updated posts that are arranged chronologically. Blogs can facilitate communications among small groups or to a worldwide audience in a way that is simpler and easier to follow than traditional email or discussion forums. With Blogger, you control who can read and write to your blog, whether you limit it to a few friends or let the entire world see what you have to say.

Code
Google’s website for the developer community offers news, downloads, tutorials, demos and documentation on Google’s APIs and developer products, plus extensive resources for anyone who wants to integrate Google services or build next-generation web applications. Google Code also serves as home base for Google’s open source initiatives, including free open source Project Hosting service and Google Summer of Code, program for involving university students in open source software development.

Gmail
This free webmail service keeps your inbox organized, displays messages in order as conversations, and helps you find any message quickly and easily with built-in Google search technology. Gmail’s powerful spam filtering and virus protection also keeps your inbox clean. Gmail is fast and accessible on mobile phones and devices, on desktop clients via free POP access, and via automatic forwarding. It includes integrated Gmail Chat so you can see when your friends are online, start a real-time chat in reply to an email, and view and search your chats in-line with your email conversations. Anyone can sign up for a free account, which includes more than 2,800 megabytes (increasing every day) of free storage. Gmail is currently available in more than 40 languages.



Google Groups
An easy way to create and join public or private discussion groups. Users can choose whether they want to read and post messages online, or use their email accounts to read and respond. A simple page creator makes it easy to create web pages right inside groups, which is ideal for shared documents or anything you want to publish online. Each Google Group has its own Google-fast search, making it easy to locate discussions in the archive. Google Groups is also home to the entire Usenet archive (dating back to 1981), so users can search, read and browse 845 million posted messages on virtually any topic. You can bookmark topics you’re interested in, and have new replies to that topic delivered to your inbox.

Orkut
This online community makes it fun and easy to find people who share your interests, reconnect with old friends, look for romantic connections, or establish new business contacts. Share scrapbook messages, photos, videos, blogs, and create and join a wide variety of online groups to discuss topics of interest, such as current events, the environment, or favorite recipes. Connecting and communicating on orkut is a great way to socialize.
Picasa
Picasa is free downloadable software from Google that helps you instantly find, edit and share all the pictures on your PC. Each time you open Picasa; it automatically locates all your pictures (even ones you forgot you had) and sorts them into visually organized albums. You can drag and drop to arrange your albums and make labels to create new groups of photos. Picasa makes sure your pictures are always organized, and advanced editing is simple with easy to use one-click fixes and powerful effects. It’s easy to share your pictures, allowing you to print, email, or upload photos to Picasa Web Albums with just a click.
Picasa Web Albums
Picasa Web Albums is a fast and easy way to put your photos online so you can share them. Use it with Google’s Picasa software to upload entire albums of your photos in a click of the software’s “Web Album” button, or use your web browser to add photos. There is no more need to attach photos one at a time to email, as you can send a link to a photo, an album or even your entire online gallery, without leaving the Picasa Web Albums site. Each account gets 1GB of free storage – enough to post and share around 4,000 standard resolution photos. You and your friends can download your photos at the same high quality to print and share online.
Reader
Google web-based feed reader makes it easy to find and subscribe to online feeds. With Google Reader, users can organize and stay current with the ever-increasing amount of web information they consume every day. Google Reader features a clean, easy-to-use interface and includes a comprehensive feed finder, multimedia feed displays, and algorithms that can assist users by automatically prioritizing content according to their interests. Google Reader also has easy sharing capabilities with email and “blog this” features, and through the Google Gears browser plug-in, Google Reader also enables you to read your feeds offline.

Google Talk
Google’s instant communications service offers different ways to integrate real-time communications into your online experience. The downloadable Google Talk client provides a free and easy way to make voice calls and send instant messages. All you need is an Internet connection, a microphone and a speaker (built in to many laptops today). After a quick download, sign in with your Gmail account and talk for free. You can also chat with your Google Talk friends inside Gmail using Gmail Chat, and Gmail archives all of your Google Talk chats and makes them searchable. And the free Google Talk Gadget lets you see who’s online and send instant messages from your own webpage or personalized iGoogle page without installing any software. Using the Google Talk Gadget you can also preview YouTube videos and Picasa Web Albums inside your chat window, or initiate a Group Chat for talking with several friends simultaneous.
Google Earth for Enterprise/Google Earth Pro
Google Earth Enterprise and Google Earth Pro enable businesses and organizations to harness the power of the Google Earth platform to integrate, organize and publish their organization’s location data, and/or support strategic decision-making based on locational datasets. Google Earth provides a powerful, intuitive platform for supporting government agencies and empowering citizens in sharing and accessing geographic information for critical needs such as disaster relief and emergency assistance.
Google Maps for Enterprise
Google Maps for Enterprise and Google Maps Pro offer the power and functionality of Google’s web-based mapping technologies to internal websites and critical applications. Organizations of all types can integrate data and seamlessly create a high performance web-based mapping experience. Ideal for applications such as workforce management, operations/logistics and CRM, these applications provide enterprise-grade support and service. Users benefit from ease of use that people love about the consumer Google Maps offering.
Google Mini
The Google Mini offers the simplicity and power of Google enterprise search technology to small and medium-sized businesses, so that employees can access relevant and secure search across intranets, file servers, and business applications. Capable of working with over 220 different file formats, the Google Mini also offers integration with existing security systems ensuring that employees can only access information they are supposed to view. The Mini comes in multiple versions. The most affordable Mini searches up to 50,000 documents, including all hardware, software and a year of support. Additional versions search up to 100,000, 200,000 or 300,000 documents. Since upgrading is easy, the Mini is great for growing organizations.
Search Appliance
This integrated hardware and software product is designed to give businesses the productivity-enhancing power of Google search. Through a simple, intuitive interface, the Google Search Appliance offers employees instant, real-time, secure access to all the information and knowledge across their enterprise, including web servers, file servers, content management systems, relational databases and business applications in more than 220 different file formats, and more than 109 languages. The security features ensure that users can only access the information that they have permission to view. The Search Appliance comes in several versions, with search capacity ranging from 500,000 documents to more than 30 million.

Google Buzz
Google Buzz is a social networking forum for public and private sharing and its key features are:
• Automatic friends lists (friends are added automatically who you have emailed them on Gmail)
• “Rich fast sharing” combines sources like Picasa and Twitter into a single feed, and it includes full-sized photo browsing
• Public and private sharing (swap between family and friends)
• Inbox integration - instead of emailing you with updates, like Facebook might, Buzz features emails that update dynamically with all Buzz thread content, like the photo viewer
• “Recommended Buzz” puts friend-of-friend content into your stream, even if you’re not acquainted. Recommendations learn over time with your feedback.


Google Skipfish
Skipfish is an active web application security reconnaissance tool. It prepares an interactive sitemap for the targeted site by carrying out a recursive crawl and dictionary-based probes. The resulting map is then annotated with the output from a number of active (but hopefully non-disruptive) security checks. The final report generated by the tool is meant to serve as a foundation for professional web application security assessments.

SketchUp Pro
SketchUp Pro is a powerful 3D modeling tool with a robust feature set that empowers users to create, view and modify 3D ideas. With SketchUp Pro, you can explore and communicate complex concepts, import and export a host of file formats, and place your models in Google Earth LayOut, a feature of SketchUp Pro, lets you place, arrange, title and annotate SketchUp models, photos and other design elements to create compelling interactive presentations and print high-resolution documents. Combining the elegance and spontaneity of pencil sketching with the speed and flexibility of today’s digital media, Google SketchUp provides a powerful yet easy-to-learn tool for creating and modifying 3D models. By inserting their models into Google Earth, design professionals and hobbyists alike can share their creations with the world. Architects, interior designers, landscape architects, art directors, game developers, city planners, and other creative professionals rely on SketchUp to help make their design ideas come to life.

Google Mobile
Google mobile products are built specifically for mobile devices, placing the information you need in the palm of your hand. Find what you need at any time, and from anywhere, using these Google mobile products:
• Search: Get exactly the information you need, with an absolute minimum of effort and distraction.
• Maps: Get draggable maps, directions, local listings, satellite imagery, and live traffic info, all on your mobile device. Available on hundreds of devices, in a wide variety of countries.
• Gmail: The fastest way to access Gmail when you’re on the go. Or just access Gmail through your mobile phone’s browser.
• SMS: Use text messaging to get quick info from Google, including local listings, sports scores, weather conditions, real-time flight info, and much more.
• YouTube: Watch, upload, and share favorite videos — YouTube is available on your mobile device wherever you are.
• Calendar: Check your Google Calendar from anywhere on your mobile device.
• News: Stay informed of global and local events at all times by accessing top headlines and searching for articles.
• Blogger: Snap a picture, write a message, and post to your blog, all from your mobile device.
• Picasa Web Albums: View your photo albums on your mobile device.
• Checkout: Shop quickly and securely on mobile-friendly merchant sites.


Google Wave: Google Apps allows multiple people to share a document but being able to share the entire document, track its history of changes and participate in any conversation that goes along with it might make quite a difference.
Google Wave is all about live sharing. Suppose I am working on a document with a team of individuals from all around the country and need to get their feedback during a working session. If the documents are shared using Wave, the transmission is happening in real time to all people on the project.
The best part is participant’s ability to reply anywhere they feel necessary, in context or through editing of the shared content. With Wave, there is no waiting for email messages to be received or voicemails returned.
Another feature of Google Wave that I see as being extremely useful is playback. When working with a group of people on a document, if someone steps away for a phone call and needs to catch up, they have the ability to play back content in Wave to see what happened while they were away. Think of this like Tivo for documents or shared sessions. Being able to play back changes to see what was happening on the stream will save time and helps other parties to catch up

Here is a quick list of some of Google most popular tools to help refine and improve your search.

Table 1


OPERATOR EXAMPLE

FINDS PAGES CONTAINING
vacation Lagos The words vacation and Lagos.
Calabar OR Mina either the word Calabar or the word Mina
"Nigerian girl" the exact phrase Nigerian girl
virus –HIV the word virus but NOT the word HIV
+sock Only the word sock, and not the plural or tenses or synonyms

~auto loan loan info for both the word auto and its synonyms: truck, car, etc.
define: computer Definitions of the word computer from around the Web.
red * blue The words red and blue separated by one or more words.
I'm Feeling Lucky Takes you directly to first web page returned for your query.


Table 2
CALCULATOR OPERATORS
MEANING TYPE INTO SEARCH BOX
+ Addition 5+4
- Subtraction 4-5
* Multiplication 7*5
/ Division 6/4
% of Percentage of 40% of 300
^ Raise to the power 2^5











Table 3

ADVANCED OPERATORS MEANING WHAT TO TYPE INTO SEARCH BOX (& DESCRIPTION OF RESULTS)
site: Search only one website admission site:www.stanford.edu
(Search Stanford Univ. site for admissions info.)
[#]…[#] Search within a range of numbers DVD player $100..150(Search for DVD players between $100 and $150)
link: linked pages link:www.stanford.edu (Find pages that link to the Stanford University website.)
info: Info about a page info:www.stanford.edu (Find information about the Stanford University website)
related: Related pages related:www.stanford.edu (Find websites related to the Stanford University website.)


THE BUSINESS SIDE OF GOOGLE
Google can also be your business partner. Imagine browsing while some coins drop into your pocket. You can transact with Google without even having a website but it is important to have one. The first thing you need to do is to inform Google search engines on the web about your website, this can be done manually or automatically by adding your website to the search engine.
The next important thing to do is to regularly get links pointing to your websites. Let your site be linked to popular sites like forums, article databases, online directories, social networking sites, and e-groups. The content of your website should have targeted keywords that are highly optimized by the search engines. Highly optimized keywords are those keywords that the search engines can quickly add to their index. You will have to consider the words or phrases people are likely to type into the search engines in other to see your business. This can be done by doing keyword research. Ensure you add fresh contents containing those keywords to your site regularly. After positioning your website as stated above, the following Google tools can enhance your business online:

Google AdSense
Google is not only about research and information gathering only, but can also make an Internet browser convert his browsing time to money time. Lots of tools are available for earning money through Google online among which are Google AdSence. The Google AdSense program enables websites in the Google Network of content sites to automatically serve text and image ads that are precisely targeted to site content – so well-matched, in fact, that readers actually find them useful. Targeting can be based on search results or on web content. The revenue generated from these ads is shared with partner publishers.
Most of the websites that make up the Google Network sign up online, and some are directed to sites with significant traffic, under agreements that vary in duration. For network members, Google offer:
• AdSense for search. This enables websites of any size to generate additional revenue by serving relevant AdWords ads targeted to search results.

• AdSense for content. This program enables website publishers to generate revenue from advertising by serving relevant AdWords ads targeted to web content. Automated technology analyzes the meaning of web content and serves relevant advertising. AdSense for content can help websites offset publishing costs or even become a primary revenue stream. There is no charge for websites to participate in this program. Using automated sign-up process; web sites can quickly display AdWords ads on their site. Majority of the revenues generated from clickthroughs are shared on these ads with Google Network members that display the ads.

Google AdWords is a global advertising program that enables advertisers to reach the people who are interested in their products or services. Advertisers use automated tools, often with little or no assistance from Google, to create ads, place bids to serve their ads, select the types of sites where they’d like their ads to appear, and set daily spending budgets. AdWords features an automated, low-cost online signup process that enables advertisers to implement campaigns that can go live in 15 minutes or less.
AdWords ranks ads for display in one of two ways: either by CPM (cost per thousand) or a by combination of the maximum cost per click (CPC), which is set by the advertiser, together with clickthrough rates and other factors used to determine the relevance of the ads. This process favors the ads that are most relevant to users, improving the experience for both the person looking for information and the advertiser looking for interested customers. AdWords has many features that make it easy to set up and manage ad campaigns for maximum efficiency and effectiveness.

Google Analytics
This tool is Free to all advertisers, publishers, and site owners, Google Analytics helps you identify the keywords, ads, referrals, and campaigns that contribute the most to your bottom line. Recently redesigned, the program can reveal even more about where visitors come from and how they interact with your site. Using Google Analytics can lead to better ads, strengthened marketing initiatives, and websites that convert more effectively




THE CRIME PART OF GOOGLE

Google is a double edge sword and you can use it either ways. If you choose to be a bad person then Google will be very useful to you , it can sometimes be a hackers best friend. You will be surprise on the amount of restricted info available and open via Google. By using the appropriate search strings one can have a lot of restricted access due to carelessness of system administrators. One thing to keep in mind is that people have been exploiting the Google algorithm lately, many false positives are brought back and you end up with sites linking to other sites in a constant loop. Try some of these for instance:

In the search box put in exactly as you see it in bold

Example 1:
allintitle: "index of/root"
result:
www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=ISO-...G=Google+Search
What it reveals is 2,510 pages that you can possible browse at your will...

Example 2
inurl:"auth_user_file.txt"
www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en...G=Google+Search
This result spawned 414 possible files to access

Here is an actual file retrieved from a site and edited, we know who the admin is and we have the hashes, that’s a job for JTR (john the ripper)

txUKhXYi4xeFs|master|admin|Worasit|Junsawang|xxx@xxx|on qk6GaDj9iBfNg|tomjang||Bug|Tom|xxx@xxx|on

intitle:index.of + mp3 -asp -html -htm -php -pls -txt
In the above example, when entered into Google this search result looks for any index of MP3 files that does not contain the standard web pages like HTML, PHP, etc. or any other non-related pages. In the above example, you can replace mp3 with avi or other file extension to search for these types of files.
intitle:index.of + mp3 "<artist name / track / group>" -asp -html -htm -php -pls -txt
In the above example you could replace "<artist name / track / group>" with the artists name, track, group, or name of the MP3 you are looking for. Keep in mind when downloading MP3 that you should own the track or song you are downloading otherwise it has considered illegal.
inurl:"ViewerFrame?Mode="
In the above simple example, Google will return results of insecure live web cams and with some of the services even allow you to control the cameras over the Internet.


Below are some other strings and you can have many different permutations.
"Index of /admin"
"Index of /password"
"Index of /mail"
"Index of /" +passwd
"Index of /" +password.txt
"Index of /" +.htaccess
index of ftp +.mdb allinurl:/cgi-bin/ +mailto
administrators.pwd.index
authors.pwd.index
service.pwd.index
filetype:config web
gobal.asax index
allintitle: "index of/admin"
allintitle: "index of/root"
allintitle: sensitive filetype:doc
allintitle: restricted filetype :mail
allintitle: restricted filetype:doc site:gov
inurl:passwd filetype:txt
inurl:admin filetype:db
inurl:iisadmin
inurl:"auth_user_file.txt"
inurl:"wwwroot/*."
top secret site:mil
confidential site:mil
allinurl: winnt/system32/ (get cmd.exe)
allinurl:/bash_history
intitle:"Index of" .sh_history
intitle:"Index of" .bash_history
intitle:"index of" passwd
intitle:"index of" people.lst
intitle:"index of" pwd.db
intitle:"index of" etc/shadow
intitle:"index of" spwd
intitle:"index of" master.passwd
intitle:"index of" htpasswd
intitle:"index of" members OR accounts
intitle:"index of" user_carts OR user_cart

There are codes I chose not to disclose for fear of abuse, and you would be wondering why I am exposing some of these codes. The bad guys already know of these codes centuries ago, it is the good guys and innocent users that don’t know them.

I hold no responsibility for what you do via the information supplied here; this is for educational purpose only. Use at your own risk. You have been warned.
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13 years 11 months ago #34165 by sose
note I mean any other research tool online apart from google you use for your academic research
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13 years 11 months ago #34167 by Nevins
Don't forget Google docs.

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13 years 11 months ago #34181 by sose
nevins go through the writeup, take your time
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13 years 11 months ago #34185 by Nevins

Google Docs & Spreadsheets
Google Docs & Spreadsheets is a free web-based word processing and spreadsheet program that allows you to create and edit documents from anywhere and collaborate with multiple people at the same time. You can take advantage of Google Docs & Spreadsheets to coordinate your group’s assignments, access your family to-do list from work or home, or work with remote colleagues on a new business plan. Import existing documents and spreadsheets, or create new ones from scratch.


My bad guess he did put it in there I must have over looked it. Anyways I found some google related cheat sheets for everyone to look at. Nice solid research by the way.







[/quote]

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13 years 11 months ago #34195 by sose
nice one nevins, that was a three pointer
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