Chapter 6: Searching the Specialty Categories

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In This Chapter

• Finding your way to Google specialty searches

• Tips for using the U.S. government search engine

• Searching the Linux and BSD worlds

• Using the Apple Macintosh and Microsoft search engines

• University searching

Take Google’s hand and let it lead you into a specialized universe or two. Or three, or four, or five. Google has created alternate search engines whose results are limited to certain subject areas. Google accomplishes this topical restriction by choosing source sites that effectively contribute to search results. On the technical side, Google has isolated the worlds of Linux, BSD, Apple Macintosh, and Microsoft. Each of these areas enjoys a dedicated engine that searches sites provided by these organizations or related to them.

To me, the most interesting specialty search is the one devoted to the U.S. government and related fields of military, local government, and global government. Google playfully refers to this search engine as UncleSam.

Rounding out the specialty categories is a large group of university-specific search engines, each of which prowls through a single college or university Web site. This mission is less limiting than you might think, because students and professors stash all kinds of documents on the school’s computers.

This chapter is mostly recreational, unless you have a professional interest in one of these subjects. The sites are Google experiments that you get to play with. Having said that, though, I find myself returning to the UncleSam engine over and over for truly productive specialty searches.

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