Love them or hate them as a company and leaving the privacy issues aside for a moment, you have to agree that Google have built themselves a pretty good search engine. Given enough time, you can find just about anything using Google.
This leaves all of us with just one problem. How to use this massive resource to its best effect; how to quickly and effectively find exactly what your looking for.
May I present to you:
CHoogle: Chris' Google Power Searches
Here are some tweaked Google searches to help you gain the very best results from Google.
File Search
Need a file? Enter part or the full filename here:
CHoogle File Search
What's happening here?
This search will add the following to your search term:
-inurl:(htm|html|php) intitle:"index of" "Last modified" "{User Input}"
-inurl:(htm|html|php) - Instructs Google not to return results with ".htm", ".html" and ".php" in the results. Effectively, this filters out results that contain just the name of the file being searched for.
intitle:"index of" "Last modified" - Instructs Google to only return pages with "index of" or "Last Modified" in the title of the page. These pages are generally web server generated file listings. An example of such a site would be http://downloadue.info/ISO/
Click here for an example search!
Weather
What's the weather like today and for the next 3 days in, say, Reykjavik, Iceland? Enter the place name here:
CHoogle Weather
What's happening here?
This search will add the following to your search term:
Weather: - Instructs Google to return weather details and a list of results that contain "weather" and the place name entered. Click here for an example search!
Phone Book
What's John Doe's phone number? Enter John's name here:
CHoogle Phone Book
What's happening here?
This search will add the following to your search term:
Phonebook: - Instructs Google to open its residential phone book and search for the name entered.
Click here for an example search!
Movies
What time is that movie on in my local cinema? Just enter your town here:
CHoogle Movies
What's happening here?
This search will add the following to your search term:
Movie: - Instructs Google to list movies and start times in Cinemas in or close by to the place name entered.
Click here for an example search!
Time
What is the time right now in, say Wellington New Zeland? Just enter the location here:
CHoogle Time
What's happening here?
This search will add the following to your search term:
Time: - Instructs Google to return the current time of place name entered.
Click here for an example search!
Dictionary
What does that mean? Just enter it here:
CHoogle Dictionary
What's happening here?
This search will add the following to your search term:
Define: - Instructs Google to return a definition of the term searched for
Click here for an example search!
Search-tastic!
- Chris