kottke.orgThis is incredible: Google Has a Secret Reference Desk. Here’s How to Use It. I knew some of these but not all, e.g. verbatim mode “returns results for exactly what you typed, stripped of personalization and synonym-swapping.” https://cardcatalogforlife.substack.com/p/google-has-a-secret-reference-desk
BoredomFestival@kottke well it WAS a secret
Niko Trimmel@BoredomFestival in fact, it never was a secret. @kottke
AnneH@kottke ha, had a book once:
https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/google-hacks-3rd/0596527063/
"Google Hacks" Still available with all that stuff.
Roadskater, Ph.D.@kottke Almost all my Google searches include -youtube because I only want words and maybe a diagram.
Pxl Phile
Negative Kelvin@kottke There was a time when +asearchterm made it mandatory.
Google killed that syntax so hard that other search engines dropped it.
I miss that time.
Sander@NegativeK @kottke
And they killed it just for Google+ where usernames were supposed to be: +coolguy etc. What a waste.
And they killed it just for Google+ where usernames were supposed to be: +coolguy etc. What a waste.
Nicky
Rowan Tommins@NegativeK There was a time when *including a search term* made that term mandatory.
Al & Val's Modern Homesteading@kottke Is there a version for DuckDuckGo? I gave up all things google a while back. Although I don't think it was moochual
Edelruth, PBS Passport HolderThis IS incredibly! Everyone should read this.
groxx@kottke unfortunately the features vary in their support - e.g. there was a good chunk of time (a couple years maybe?) where quotes didn't ensure exact matches, and you had to +word or +"multiple words" (which didn't always work) to get precision again. I've also had negative and site matches (and especially negative site matches) fail, though it has consistently at least down-ranked those terms. it depends on how "helpful" Google is feeling / who wants a promotion this quarter.
generally speaking though yea, these are all super useful, and you can get many of them without needing to remember terms if you use their "advanced search" page: https://www.google.com/advanced_search
the advanced search page has also worked consistently for me, unlike special terms in the general UI.
J. R. DePriest 
:EA DATA. SF:I use site: and inurl: often.
I still have trouble remembering to use "{search_term}" instead of +{search_term}.
I'm not sure if -{search_exclude_term} ever worked.
lobster