4 ms·

For those that might not know. You can remove keywords and sites from a search. Most search engines can do this but the syntax might be slightly different. Fo

For those that might not know. You can remove keywords and sites from a search. Most search engines can do this but the syntax might be slightly different. For Google it's a minus sign. (sometimes it's the word NOT) E.g. "onions -news" (without the quotes) will search for the word onion and not return any sites that have the word news in them. This can have false positives so youd need to play around with the words. False positives because non news sites may have the word news and news sites might not have that word.

bartread 10y ago
That's very true, and useful information, but it's the kind of thing only a sophisticated searcher does. Very occasionally I still use extended search syntax. On the other hand, back in the 90s it was a practical necessity to use extended search syntax with services like AltaVista to find anything because search engines were basically terrible. Google on the other hand has and continues to expend considerable effort to ensure such syntax is unnecessary 99.9%+ of the time. Consequently very few people know it any more. Combine this with the fact that in order to use the extended search syntax effectively you often need at least some understanding of what you're searching for (e.g., at least the ability to discern bad vs. good information), and you can quickly see why the average Joe is going to end up seeing and quite possibly believing the false information. (I, for example, not being any kind of foodie, only know that it takes much longer than 10 minutes to caramelise onions specifically because I saw a friend who is a foodie do it a few years ago. He specifically made the point that it takes ages, otherwise you lose the sweet flavour. If that hadn't happened I'd believe it takes 10 minutes because Google said so.)
aspenmayer 10y ago
I was wondering how long it would take for someone to bring up the search modifiers. Here's the best/most complete list of them I've found, with examples of how to use them. https://bynd.com/news-ideas/google-advanced-search-comprehensive-list-google-search-operators/ https://bynd.com/news-ideas/google-advanced-search-comprehen...
- losteverything 10y ago
  I search genealogy type stuff. How about distance between words. (Smith married to Ellen - search for those words close to each other ) How about sounds similar. Like burger. What about saving complicated searches.
sesqu 10y ago
I tried using this just the other day to find a faintly-remembered old news article about a topic currently in the news. I spent maybe 15 minutes getting nowhere, but noticed that googling for something hypothetically like "tower -trump" would pop up old news articles about the Eiffel Tower on news sites with sidebars linking to current news about President Trump. The minus operator either no longer works at all, or it just penalizes results without eliminating them.

bartread 10y ago

That's very true, and useful information, but it's the kind of thing only a sophisticated searcher does. Very occasionally I still use extended search syntax. On the other hand, back in the 90s it was a practical necessity to use extended search syntax with services like AltaVista to find anything because search engines were basically terrible. Google on the other hand has and continues to expend considerable effort to ensure such syntax is unnecessary 99.9%+ of the time. Consequently very few people know it any more. Combine this with the fact that in order to use the extended search syntax effectively you often need at least some understanding of what you're searching for (e.g., at least the ability to discern bad vs. good information), and you can quickly see why the average Joe is going to end up seeing and quite possibly believing the false information. (I, for example, not being any kind of foodie, only know that it takes much longer than 10 minutes to caramelise onions specifically because I saw a friend who is a foodie do it a few years ago. He specifically made the point that it takes ages, otherwise you lose the sweet flavour. If that hadn't happened I'd believe it takes 10 minutes because Google said so.)

aspenmayer 10y ago

I was wondering how long it would take for someone to bring up the search modifiers. Here's the best/most complete list of them I've found, with examples of how to use them. https://bynd.com/news-ideas/google-advanced-search-comprehensive-list-google-search-operators/ https://bynd.com/news-ideas/google-advanced-search-comprehen...

losteverything 10y ago
I search genealogy type stuff. How about distance between words. (Smith married to Ellen - search for those words close to each other ) How about sounds similar. Like burger. What about saving complicated searches.

sesqu 10y ago

I tried using this just the other day to find a faintly-remembered old news article about a topic currently in the news. I spent maybe 15 minutes getting nowhere, but noticed that googling for something hypothetically like "tower -trump" would pop up old news articles about the Eiffel Tower on news sites with sidebars linking to current news about President Trump. The minus operator either no longer works at all, or it just penalizes results without eliminating them.