3 ms·

My roommate's hamster had a porn addiction in his teens. That hamster really learned how to use a search engine. Some notes I found scribbled in his cage: 1.

My roommate's hamster had a porn addiction in his teens. That hamster really learned how to use a search engine. Some notes I found scribbled in his cage: 1. Never use the onsite search function. It's broken, undocumented, limited. Use google or ddg with 'site:...' 2. Learn all the search operators like intitle, inurl, etc. 3. Try different search engines. Sometimes one engine happens not to have indexed what you're looking for yet 4. Search for the text in UI elements of websites. E.g if you'm looking for a movie made in a particular year, go to IMDB and look at the part of a movie page that says the year, then search for that particular string like this: 'site:imdb.com "Made in: 1996"' you can turn almost any recurring element of a website into a tag this way. 5. Most of the above tips work best if you have a specific site to search use 'site:...' So, divide and conquer. Find the site(s) that will probably contain what you want and only then search for the thing.

autoexec 4y ago
> . Learn all the search operators like intitle, inurl, etc. Google seems to ignore these 90% of the time I try them. I have better luck with site:, but inurl is pretty much useless these days
dotancohen 4y ago
> That hamster really learned how to use a search engine. Unfortunately, the things that hamster learned are no longer relevant. Using + and - on keywords no longer works with Google - your luck on other search engines will vary. Sometimes adding quotes around the keyword / keyphrase functions as +, sometimes it does not. There is no reliable way to get - behaviour anymore. And even verbatim search sometimes includes synonyms. And allmighty help you if there is a product or popular media figure with the keyword you are searching. The search results will be flooded with links to some Marvel character that happens to share a name with the *nix daemon whose error messages you are searching.

autoexec 4y ago

> . Learn all the search operators like intitle, inurl, etc. Google seems to ignore these 90% of the time I try them. I have better luck with site:, but inurl is pretty much useless these days

dotancohen 4y ago

> That hamster really learned how to use a search engine. Unfortunately, the things that hamster learned are no longer relevant. Using + and - on keywords no longer works with Google - your luck on other search engines will vary. Sometimes adding quotes around the keyword / keyphrase functions as +, sometimes it does not. There is no reliable way to get - behaviour anymore. And even verbatim search sometimes includes synonyms. And allmighty help you if there is a product or popular media figure with the keyword you are searching. The search results will be flooded with links to some Marvel character that happens to share a name with the *nix daemon whose error messages you are searching.