Operators First, for History s Sake

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Operators First, for History's Sake

Remember 

To use this tip, it's important to understand how Google and your browser keep track of your search queries. Keep in mind these two facts:

• On the Google home page, your browser keeps a history of search requests. The Google keyword box is a form, and most browsers can keep track of everything typed into forms. Look in your browser's settings to clear or disable the history of all the forms you fill out, including Google search requests.

• On the Google Toolbar, Google keeps a history of your search requests. You can turn off this feature in the Toolbar Options (see Chapter 9).

Assuming that you have both features turned on, you see a list of previous search requests pop down from the keyword box - on both the Google site and the Toolbar - when you begin typing. This list corresponds to the letters you're typing and shortens as you type more letters. This feature drives some people to distraction, but I like it and always have both histories enabled.

The point of all this relates to search operators (see Chapter 2 for an introduction to and list of search operators), especially the ones unique to Google. Many of these Google-specific operators can be placed anywhere in the keyword string, like this:

 'google for dummies' site:bradhill.com site:bradhill.com 'google for dummies'

These examples deliver the same search results. The advantage to putting the operator first, and doing so every time you use that operator, is that the history feature displays a list of all your site searches when you begin typing that operator. That list makes a convenient record of sites that you've Googled in the past. (See Figure 17-2.)

Figure 17-2: Putting Google operators first creates an operator-specific history list.

I find this technique particularly useful with the site, cache, link, intitle, and inurl operators.

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