5 ms·

Ask HN: How do I force Google to search using plural

1 points by kooshball 12y ago

I was looking for information on https libraries. On google https will return a bunch of results for http, which is totally useless to me. I tried both +https and "https" and neither seem to affect the results. Is there some other trick I'm missing?

dekhn 12y ago
+ is no longer a Google Search operator. Quoting a word is. What query did you do, specifically, and what kind of HTTPS libraries are you looking for? If I do [ https ] almost all links on the SERP contain the literal string HTTPS. If I do [ "https" ] every link on the SERP contains the literal string HTTPS. In both cases, the results are nearly worthless. So, you must be trying something like [ "https" libraries ] Again, that returns only moderately relevant results (all the matches contain https literal text, but it's not a nice list of https libraries). Being more specific is going to guide the engine to understand your intent more clearly. For example [ "https" programming library for C++ ] finds a nice list of HTTPS libraries, including this link about half-way down (personally, I would prefer that was on top): C/C++ libraries for HTTP programming - Stack Overflow stackoverflow.com/questions/.../c-c-libraries-for-http-programming Sep 15, 2010 - C/C++ libraries for HTTP programming [duplicate] ... What well known C/C++ libraries are out there that could allow one to implement servlets, or at least provide most of the essentials for .... Self contained http/https library ... Note the search engine noticed the page has https text in it, even though the title does not. The page points at libcurl, which seems like a good answer. Another detail is that there are both server and client libraries for https, you should probably specify which you want: [ "https" client library for c++ ] and in fact, that SERP is pretty great (first two links are both great starting points).
- dekhn 12y ago
  Oh, and [ "https" client ] also does a pretty good job.
- wanda 12y ago
  This. Try being more specific, but not only with what you are looking for, but also with what you are not looking for. - is still an operator and excludes words so you could say: -http -public to exclude results about actual public libraries with books, and also to exclude http. Likewise you have intitle: filetype: ext: intext: allintitle: allintext: etc.

1 points by kooshball 12y ago

dekhn 12y ago

+ is no longer a Google Search operator. Quoting a word is. What query did you do, specifically, and what kind of HTTPS libraries are you looking for? If I do [ https ] almost all links on the SERP contain the literal string HTTPS. If I do [ "https" ] every link on the SERP contains the literal string HTTPS. In both cases, the results are nearly worthless. So, you must be trying something like [ "https" libraries ] Again, that returns only moderately relevant results (all the matches contain https literal text, but it's not a nice list of https libraries). Being more specific is going to guide the engine to understand your intent more clearly. For example [ "https" programming library for C++ ] finds a nice list of HTTPS libraries, including this link about half-way down (personally, I would prefer that was on top): C/C++ libraries for HTTP programming - Stack Overflow stackoverflow.com/questions/.../c-c-libraries-for-http-programming Sep 15, 2010 - C/C++ libraries for HTTP programming [duplicate] ... What well known C/C++ libraries are out there that could allow one to implement servlets, or at least provide most of the essentials for .... Self contained http/https library ... Note the search engine noticed the page has https text in it, even though the title does not. The page points at libcurl, which seems like a good answer. Another detail is that there are both server and client libraries for https, you should probably specify which you want: [ "https" client library for c++ ] and in fact, that SERP is pretty great (first two links are both great starting points).

dekhn 12y ago
Oh, and [ "https" client ] also does a pretty good job.
wanda 12y ago
This. Try being more specific, but not only with what you are looking for, but also with what you are not looking for. - is still an operator and excludes words so you could say: -http -public to exclude results about actual public libraries with books, and also to exclude http. Likewise you have intitle: filetype: ext: intext: allintitle: allintext: etc.