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guidebook of internet searching table of contents 0 introduction 4 1 basic rules for internet searching 5 2 the major search engines 6 google 6 microsoft bing and yahoo search 7 3 people searches 9 pipl 9 facebook 10 linkedin 10 addresses.com 11 whocallsme 12 4 searching for products and deals 13 ask.com deals 13 retailmenot 14 price grabber 15 google product search 16 5 image searches 18 flickr 18 google images 19 google labs similar images 20 picitup 21 creative commons search 22 6 video searches 23 youtube 23 bing video search 24 google video search 25 6 searching for files 26 cnet s download.com software 26 bitsnoop torrents 27 filestube 28 8 real-time searches 29 one riot 29 twitter 30 9 smart search 31 2 artofstinginess.com

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guidebook of internet searching wolframalpha 31 7 other special search engines 33 8 tips to do better searching 34 don t miss out on our other cool manuals 35 3 artofstinginess.com

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guidebook of internet searching 0 introduction i dedicated myself to creating this manual to make searching on the internet easier for non-techie people while most of us will know how to use search engines in their most basic form there are numerous other ways we can go about finding these things using specific methods for each particular kind of search from images to videos to products ­ we ve tried to cover all major search engine branches in this guide we ll also explore how search engines work to get a better understanding of them this way you can optimize your search queries as well as your own online content hope you enjoy it ~dean sherwin 4 artofstinginess.com

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guidebook of internet searching 1 basic rules for internet searching while most grammar and symbols are ignored by search engines to better facilitate the search results some aren t as they may be critical to your search for example the dollar sign isn t ignored in case you re searching for a price the search terms canon 400 and cannon $400 will obviously yield different results programming language such as letter sequences and symbols aren t ignored either neither are hyphens depending on how they re used the key thing to remember about this principle is that if any grammar in your search terms has an undeniable meaning or relevance there then it will be accounted for small words which could be omitted are not included when searching for example a or the aren t taken into account there is one exception to this rule ­ see below then we have what is referred to as obvious intent if you re searching for the killers you re clearly looking for pages related to the famous rock band ­ not homicidal maniacs also the search engine will probably have chosen to include the because it s part of the bands title even though in other circumstances it would ve been omitted the search commands below will work for almost any search engine there are a few exceptions to the rule which we ll discuss later common search commands · by using double quotes you re implying that you want search results that contain that exact phrasing with no changes to the order of the words · using the minus sign a hyphen but used differently omits certain words from the search however unlike the hyphen it must be preceded by a space anti-virus will not omit virus using anti -virus will this is useful when you know certain words that ll sway your search in a direction you don t want it to go · using the asterisk symbol will tell that you re looking for additional terms and want to include them in the search toyota will yield many different toyota car and truck models but just toyota will return the official website and related pages · or ­ by using the or search command you re saying that you want to search for one of two phrases like toyota or nissan with the or in all-caps additional google commands · in title by putting this before a search terms you re telling google to only return pages with the query enclosed in the page title this narrows down search results which could be regarded as ambiguous i often find this particularly useful when i m looking for jobs or products that are hard to come by · site by using this command you ll be returned search results only from the specified website so if we searched google for cell phone site:makeuseof.com making sure there was no gab between the colon and the web address we d be limiting the results to relevant articles on makeuseof · using the plus sign will yield results that definitely include the words after the plus sign for example toyota +news will yield only news stories about the car manufacturer for a complete overview of commands refer to the google cheat sheet at the end of this manual 5 artofstinginess.com

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guidebook of internet searching 2 the major search engines google google is undoubtedly the best known and widely used search engine today so i m willing to guess that you ve googled before it doesn t exactly take an albert einstein to figure out how to search for basic things like youtube or use cell phone as modem we ve all been there but what about when you want to find something more specific or want google to behave in a specific way well for most google operations there are certain commands you can enter along with your search ways you can enter said search or criteria that must be fulfilled when using advanced search on the search results page you can further narrow your search by clicking the link search within the results towards the bottom of the page this enables you to enter another search term and only look for matching results in the existing results for more google goodness read varun kashyap s article on 10 firefox add-ons to enhance google search 6 artofstinginess.com

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guidebook of internet searching microsoft bing and yahoo search since microsoft bing bought yahoo search in the third quarter of 2009 both search engines now use the same commands and rules on user s end ­ even though they index and search the web differently most are the same as google s in an effort to make users migrate more easily but some differ basic rules for searching with yahoo and bing the grammar rules as outlined when we looked at google are all the same again this is in an effort to make your search results better so you can leave out most grammar unless it is crucial to your search if this is the case it will fall into the obvious intent category the suggested search function and the explore concepts feature are quite cool when using yahoo basically when you re entering your search term previous searches by other users will appear below the text entry box these are optimized searches and will lead you to better results by clicking on them the explore concepts function which appears to the right of the suggestions as seen in the screen shot gives you keywords and searches related to your main search which may come in handy later or even exactly be what you re looking for yahoo also features shortcuts for popular informative searches such as queries relating to weather transport airports etc they work by simply entering a specific term related to the subject followed by the topic in question so to find information about an airport simply enter in the airport name or code followed by the term airport for a cheat sheet containing all of these shortcuts click here yahoo site explorer also allows you to explore a specific site with more ease as opposed to using the site command it can be found here you can see a screenshot below where i demonstrated the feature with makeuseof.com 7 artofstinginess.com

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guidebook of internet searching the yahoo command most commands are the same as when searching with google there is only one really specific to yahoo · use an exclamation mark to skip by the results page and go to the most relevant result this only works for yahoo services such as mail or games and is similar to the i m feeling lucky feature of google searching with microsoft bing bing differs from google in numerous ways and may suite you better some difference include how bing will show fewer search results if it is certain it understands what you re searching for when you hover your mouse over the result you can summon extra information and more pages related to the site while bing doesn t have localized sites all international versions lead back to bing.com it will automatically detect via your ip where you re located to provide relevant results for you in the sponsored results section you can also select the option on the homepage to only search pages from your local you can see in the screenshot above that bing has detected that i am from ireland and gives me the option to search irish websites only 8 artofstinginess.com

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guidebook of internet searching 3 people searches pipl pipl.com is one of the best known people search engines and one of the most useful the homepage is minimalistic and asks you for a little information concerning your target as you can see in the screenshot below there are four main tabs above the search box ­ name email username and phone there is also a business function in beta to search for a company information used by pipl · · · · · · · · name city state county email address phone number screen name usernames for services such as facebook twitter etc company name for business function only pipl located my website blogs and sites i work for mentions in articles and my personal profiles on social networking sites i got good results because i have a strong online presence for people with a weak online presence or just a poplar name you may have to sift through a lot of results until you find the one you re looking for especially if you can t supply further info like an e-mail address or phone number 9 artofstinginess.com

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guidebook of internet searching facebook searching with facebook is fairly simple however you must be signed in to do so using the search box in the top right hand corner will usually provide you some decent results as you can see there are eight main categories in which the results are organized this organization is specific to how facebook is made up people pages groups apps events web pages and posts by people you know when searching with facebook it s best not to get too complicated keep it simple by only searching for the names of people groups organizations and maybe their location linkedin linkedin is a kind of professional social network which many people use to house their portfolios and indeed show them off it s a great place to find people especially web workers and people who need an online presence because of their jobs at the top of the page there is a search function which just asks you for the person s name simply type it in and you should find that person if they re on the network 10 artofstinginess.com

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guidebook of internet searching the people directory which you can access by launching a blank search can be used to skim through first and second degree connections you ll soon notice that with a few levels of connections you can trace back to almost anyone addresses.com addresses.com is the ultimate directory to find where people and businesses are located aside from this feature they can also find e-mail addresses phone numbers and zip codes you can see the search form below as it is shown on the homepage this allows you to choose who or what you re looking for the business directory turned out to be very good as was the e-mail lookup feature i could only successfully locate 1/3 people i searched for which is still pretty impressive given the fact that not everyone is going to be listed or has a strong online presence the information is found by searching billions of current utility records court records county records change of address records property records business records and any other kind of publicly available records the only downside is that you have to pay a small fee for exact information about the person such as their address however i found that by taking the information provided to you about their hometown and relatives could easily be used to locate them yourself via internet searches and contacting people close to them nobody is ever far from a linkedin user it would seem 11 artofstinginess.com

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guidebook of internet searching whocallsme i thought i d include whocallsme as well as well as the reverse phone look-up service supplied by addresses.com basically this is a database of suspect telemarketers and scammers who have often rang people before these numbers eventually become notorious and are submitted to the database for all to be warned so if you get a suspect call it may be worth a search for localized reverse look-up services canada and europe i suggest reading tina s artickel on makeuseof ­ 8 online tools to identify the owner of a phone number 12 artofstinginess.com

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guidebook of internet searching 4 searching for products and deals makeuseof just recently published the ultimate shopping guide a similar manual but entirely devoted to tackling the various problems of shopping online and offline check it out if there was ever a place to find great deals weird products and the odd freebie it was the internet millions of retailers and businesses come online every year each more desperate than the last to get their name out there offering unbelievable prices and special offers here i m going to show you some of the best places to find them ask.com deals ask.com s deals section is the new kid on the block but unlike its main arm the actual ask search engine it s really good every day thousands of deals and special offers are logged by the service just waiting to be found by you the engine works by categorizing the products and services it has promotional offers on the most basic way of finding a bargain using ask deals is to search for the product or service on the home page for example a search for televisions returned the results below 13 artofstinginess.com

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guidebook of internet searching there are two tabs near the top the main one all deals and coupons returns every result for the products searched while coupons only is useful if you re looking for money off a certain product as you can see there are massive saving to be had ­ i spotted some of around 60 along the top of ask.com s deals result page there is a horizontal menu bar for filtering your results shown in the above screenshot by clicking on any of the tabs you refine your search accordingly you can also search for coupon deals near you using the search function to the right side of the results for example by entering groceries in london locates printable coupons for supermarkets in the london area this is definitely one of the best deal search engines out there by using their existing searching power they harvest all the web has to offer with offers ranging from high to low from big names such as amazon right down to the little specialized sites and stores retailmenot another site for finding good deals on products and getting coupons is retailmenot it boasts proudly the fact that its databases stretches over 40,000 stores in almost every western country including the us uk france holland canada and some countries further afield such as india and australia firstly select what you re looking for from the list of tabs along the top of the screen your options are coupon codes printable coupons and grocery coupons when you search for a product using the search bar on the homescreen you re returned a list of relevant sites when i searched for ipod i got hundreds of online tech sites which shared coupon codes with the aggregator clicking on the site brings up the relevant coupons which can then be used when purchasing from that site or store 14 artofstinginess.com

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guidebook of internet searching to see all coupon codes and offers available for one site in particular simply enter the site s url into the search box of course an alternative way to search for coupons is to click on your country s national flag in the right sidebar or one of the product tags which are listed underneath this will bring you to a search results page with coupons and codes relevant to your chosen option price grabber price grabber is the leading and one of the best price comparison websites on the internet today when launching a query a list of products will appear by clicking compare now underneath a certain product a list of retailers and online merchants will appear with their corresponding price aand a user 15 artofstinginess.com

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