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Why doesn't google.com have a comprehensive list of these? I'm constantly seeing new ones that I didn't know about, but google never teaches you about them so y

Why doesn't google.com have a comprehensive list of these? I'm constantly seeing new ones that I didn't know about, but google never teaches you about them so you have to find them in obscure blog posts

KorfmannArno 6y ago
My guess would be because Google eventually wants users to find everything via natural language queries.
- lizardmancan 6y ago
  the goal is to make you look at advertisement
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  Actually, Google eventually wants users to find everything with predictive AI giving it to them before they search. That's not really a secret, they've announced more than once in the past that that is what they are increasingly working toward.
  - souprock 6y ago
    That would be great for malware researchers. Google can give them malware before they even search for it! The reality is that all sorts of things are blocked now, including things that are perfectly legal.
  - mcswell 6y ago
    Reminds me of a story I once read about feeding to an optimizing compiler a program to print out the digits of pi.
vezycash 6y ago
Google randomly ignores "search term in quotes". Related:examplesite.com used to work well. Now, it's better to use sites like alternativeto.net. ~phrase is unnecessary because but google searches for synonyms by default phrase1 + phrase2 - Google randomly ignores it. I use it this way +compulsoryTerm Although rare, there are things I simply can't find using Google. But Bing would. If Google keeps it up, other search engines would benefit.
- ewired 6y ago
  Doing some "related:" queries returns some interesting results that look human-curated and out-of-date. related:google.com shows results for Yahoo, Bing, AOL Search, and HotBot (which used to be a search engine, but the brand is now for a VPN provider).
  - chris_f 6y ago
    That is great! It's like a search engine blast from the past. Also interesting, related:bing.com gives me no results.
- EE84M3i 6y ago
  I would be interested to see an example of it ignoring quotes silently because I've heard a lot about it. I use search terms in quotes relatively often and have never noticed that, although it does the 'did you mean without quotes' thing all the time. In the past for very long tail content, I've found Bing and Yandex to be useful. Yandex image search in particular is often better than Google or Bing, particularly if you are searching for people because it does some facial recognition.
- stanislavb 6y ago
  Ah, I never knew "related:" existed. Also, saashub.com could be used as an alternative to alternativeto.net :)
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
mrnuclear 6y ago
At least now we are somewhat more empowered to find obscure blog posts. Which raises the suggestion that hackers are advantaged towards finding information. Which raises the suggestion that we should take the independent initiative of using SEO to inform more people about how to become search super-users.
- abarrettwilsdon 6y ago
  Yea, almost all existing Dorking content is around either SEO or offensive/defensive security scanning. The broader OSINT has used dorking for a decade plus (e.g. exploit-db.com goes back to 2003). The goal in writing this was to democratize access beyond those who use it regularly for work
abraae 6y ago
Having a reliable search syntax would commoditise Google as other search engines could offer the same options. Having just a search box, instead of lots of options was how they moved ahead of e.g altavista in the first place. Google would rather people are trained to just type human speak into the search box.
- chii 6y ago
  > would commoditise Google as other search engines could offer the same options i highly doubt that's a concern. Google's competitive advantage will not be eroded if they did have operators clearly documented. Another search engine could not replicate google's index, even if they could replicate the operators. And most people do want to just type human speak and have the machine magically interpret it correctly.
lstamour 6y ago
https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/2466433?hl=en https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/2466433?hl=en but it's not complete. My favourite is actually the "range" operator. I don't need it often, but when combined with the exact match quotation marks, it's great. For example, here's a search for Sony bluetooth headphones available on Amazon.ca for between CA$100 and $150: https://www.google.com/search?rls=en&q=site%3Aamazon.ca+%22CDN%24+100..150%22+%22bluetooth%22+intitle%3Aheadphones+intitle%3Asony+%22In+Stock%22+%22Add+to+Cart%22 https://www.google.com/search?rls=en&q=site%3Aamazon.ca+%22C... The range operator also works great with years, dates, though the Tools menu with shortcuts for before: and after: operators can help there too. One I haven't seen mentioned yet but used to be documented is that you can leave out words in a phrase by replacing them with an asterisk. I'm having trouble not italicizing text in this comment box, so pretend \* means a single asterisk: "Stocks rose today by \* percent" as a search matches the phrase "stocks rose today, led by a 4.4 percent". (Which until this post, had only one result on Google.) Note that it's not 100% exact matching, because for actually exact matches you have to select "Verbatim" under Tools > All Results in the menu below the search box on the results page. The only downside to using all these operators is that you'll get very familiar and frustrated with the Google reCAPTCHA prompts as your search is "too precise to be human". Even when signed in to Google, especially often in Safari on an iPhone. Sigh.
- BeeOnRope 6y ago
 You can use three asterisks in a row, surrounded by whitespace, to get a single asterisk like: "Stocks rose today by * percent". Oddly, this results in a non-italicized asterisk in the output, contrary to reports in earlier comments that the resulting asterisk would be in italics. There is, however, a zero-length italicized string right before the asterisk in the HTML: "Stocks rose today by * percent".
 - JadeNB 6y ago
 > Oddly, this results in a non-italicized asterisk in the output, contrary to reports in earlier comments that the resulting asterisk would be in italics. There is, however, a zero-length italicized string right before the asterisk in the HTML: > "Stocks rose today by * percent". Sounds like the matching is something like /\<\*.*\*/ or maybe /\<\*[^*]*\*/ rather than /\<\*.+*/
beefield 6y ago
> Why doesn't google.com have a comprehensive list of these? It is quite obvious that google does not give a s&it whether I find what I think I want to find. Google is much more interested in 1) serving me ads they think are most profitable and 2) giving me results they think I want.
- mcswell 6y ago
  I'm pretty sure your (1) is correct. I think your (2) should be giving you results they think you should want, as in you shouldn't want to search for a conspiracy theory (even if your goal is to see what the other side is thinking).
EE84M3i 6y ago
One reason they might not have a comprehensive list is because some might be relatively expensive to execute, but they can't/won't disable them for legacy reasons.
- JadeNB 6y ago
  > One reason they might not have a comprehensive list is because some might be relatively expensive to execute, but they can't/won't disable them for legacy reasons. Ah, Google, always so reluctant to get rid of anything legacy because of their fanatical devotion to their existing user base.

KorfmannArno 6y ago

My guess would be because Google eventually wants users to find everything via natural language queries.

lizardmancan 6y ago
the goal is to make you look at advertisement
dragonwriter 6y ago
Actually, Google eventually wants users to find everything with predictive AI giving it to them before they search. That's not really a secret, they've announced more than once in the past that that is what they are increasingly working toward.
- souprock 6y ago
  That would be great for malware researchers. Google can give them malware before they even search for it! The reality is that all sorts of things are blocked now, including things that are perfectly legal.
- mcswell 6y ago
  Reminds me of a story I once read about feeding to an optimizing compiler a program to print out the digits of pi.

vezycash 6y ago

Google randomly ignores "search term in quotes". Related:examplesite.com used to work well. Now, it's better to use sites like alternativeto.net. ~phrase is unnecessary because but google searches for synonyms by default phrase1 + phrase2 - Google randomly ignores it. I use it this way +compulsoryTerm Although rare, there are things I simply can't find using Google. But Bing would. If Google keeps it up, other search engines would benefit.

ewired 6y ago
Doing some "related:" queries returns some interesting results that look human-curated and out-of-date. related:google.com shows results for Yahoo, Bing, AOL Search, and HotBot (which used to be a search engine, but the brand is now for a VPN provider).
- chris_f 6y ago
  That is great! It's like a search engine blast from the past. Also interesting, related:bing.com gives me no results.
EE84M3i 6y ago
I would be interested to see an example of it ignoring quotes silently because I've heard a lot about it. I use search terms in quotes relatively often and have never noticed that, although it does the 'did you mean without quotes' thing all the time. In the past for very long tail content, I've found Bing and Yandex to be useful. Yandex image search in particular is often better than Google or Bing, particularly if you are searching for people because it does some facial recognition.
stanislavb 6y ago
Ah, I never knew "related:" existed. Also, saashub.com could be used as an alternative to alternativeto.net :)

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

mrnuclear 6y ago

At least now we are somewhat more empowered to find obscure blog posts. Which raises the suggestion that hackers are advantaged towards finding information. Which raises the suggestion that we should take the independent initiative of using SEO to inform more people about how to become search super-users.

abarrettwilsdon 6y ago
Yea, almost all existing Dorking content is around either SEO or offensive/defensive security scanning. The broader OSINT has used dorking for a decade plus (e.g. exploit-db.com goes back to 2003). The goal in writing this was to democratize access beyond those who use it regularly for work

abraae 6y ago

Having a reliable search syntax would commoditise Google as other search engines could offer the same options. Having just a search box, instead of lots of options was how they moved ahead of e.g altavista in the first place. Google would rather people are trained to just type human speak into the search box.

chii 6y ago
> would commoditise Google as other search engines could offer the same options i highly doubt that's a concern. Google's competitive advantage will not be eroded if they did have operators clearly documented. Another search engine could not replicate google's index, even if they could replicate the operators. And most people do want to just type human speak and have the machine magically interpret it correctly.

lstamour 6y ago

https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/2466433?hl=en https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/2466433?hl=en but it's not complete. My favourite is actually the "range" operator. I don't need it often, but when combined with the exact match quotation marks, it's great. For example, here's a search for Sony bluetooth headphones available on Amazon.ca for between CA$100 and $150: https://www.google.com/search?rls=en&q=site%3Aamazon.ca+%22CDN%24+100..150%22+%22bluetooth%22+intitle%3Aheadphones+intitle%3Asony+%22In+Stock%22+%22Add+to+Cart%22 https://www.google.com/search?rls=en&q=site%3Aamazon.ca+%22C... The range operator also works great with years, dates, though the Tools menu with shortcuts for before: and after: operators can help there too. One I haven't seen mentioned yet but used to be documented is that you can leave out words in a phrase by replacing them with an asterisk. I'm having trouble not italicizing text in this comment box, so pretend \* means a single asterisk: "Stocks rose today by \* percent" as a search matches the phrase "stocks rose today, led by a 4.4 percent". (Which until this post, had only one result on Google.) Note that it's not 100% exact matching, because for actually exact matches you have to select "Verbatim" under Tools > All Results in the menu below the search box on the results page. The only downside to using all these operators is that you'll get very familiar and frustrated with the Google reCAPTCHA prompts as your search is "too precise to be human". Even when signed in to Google, especially often in Safari on an iPhone. Sigh.

BeeOnRope 6y ago
You can use three asterisks in a row, surrounded by whitespace, to get a single asterisk like: "Stocks rose today by * percent". Oddly, this results in a non-italicized asterisk in the output, contrary to reports in earlier comments that the resulting asterisk would be in italics. There is, however, a zero-length italicized string right before the asterisk in the HTML: "Stocks rose today by * percent".
- JadeNB 6y ago
 > Oddly, this results in a non-italicized asterisk in the output, contrary to reports in earlier comments that the resulting asterisk would be in italics. There is, however, a zero-length italicized string right before the asterisk in the HTML: > "Stocks rose today by * percent". Sounds like the matching is something like /\<\*.*\*/ or maybe /\<\*[^*]*\*/ rather than /\<\*.+*/

beefield 6y ago

> Why doesn't google.com have a comprehensive list of these? It is quite obvious that google does not give a s&it whether I find what I think I want to find. Google is much more interested in 1) serving me ads they think are most profitable and 2) giving me results they think I want.

mcswell 6y ago
I'm pretty sure your (1) is correct. I think your (2) should be giving you results they think you should want, as in you shouldn't want to search for a conspiracy theory (even if your goal is to see what the other side is thinking).

EE84M3i 6y ago

One reason they might not have a comprehensive list is because some might be relatively expensive to execute, but they can't/won't disable them for legacy reasons.

JadeNB 6y ago
> One reason they might not have a comprehensive list is because some might be relatively expensive to execute, but they can't/won't disable them for legacy reasons. Ah, Google, always so reluctant to get rid of anything legacy because of their fanatical devotion to their existing user base.