Google Search Query Add-Ons. Ways To Get Better Search Results

Posted May 15th, 2008, in: Computer Problems and Fixes| SEO, SEM, SMO Etc| Technology

You know about using quotes to get an exact text string including spaces between words.

You probably already knew about -word to 86 any sites containing a certain word from the results.

And there’s site: url 

And you may already know about Define: word to get a dictionary entry.

But there are tons of these things.  You can use Google as a calculator, you can search for text in specific HTML tags and much, much more.

A good place to find many of these (if not all of them) is at GoogleGuide.com  

One interesting example of this is using intitle: or inurl: to get addresses of security cameras that aren’t password-protected.  Since the software that comes with these things is left to the default settings and someone wasn’t savvy enough to password-protect the cameras when they were set up, you can actually go to these cameras and control them as if you were in charge of them.  You can peer into other places in the world in realtime thru the lenses of un-secure security cameras!  And move them about!

Here’s a myspace blog entry where this guy lists many examples of this.

Here are some example google queries from the post.

  • google – inurl:”view/index.shtml” – Axis Network Camera
  • google – SNC-RZ30 HOME – Sony network cam
  • google – inurl:indexFrame.shtml Axis – Axis Video Server(cam)
  • google – intitle:”Live View / – AXIS” – AXIS Video Live Camera
  • google – intitle:”Live View / – AXIS” | inurl:view/view.sht – AXIS Video Live View
  • google – intitle:”The AXIS 200 Home Page” – AXIS 200 Network Camera
  • google – intitle:liveapplet inurl:LvAppl – Canon Network Camera
  • google – intext:”MOBOTIX M1″ intext:”Open Menu” – Mobotix Network Camera
  • google – intitle:”WJ-NT104 Main Page” Or inurl:”ViewerFrame?Mode=” – Panasonic Network Camera
  • google – intitle:”QuickCamPro WebCam” inurl:webcam – QuickCamPro
  • google – intitle:”SiteZAP WebCam Control” – SiteZAP WebCam
I bet SEOs are going crazy over this with their dragon-chasing.  Someone could spend weeks trying to figure out more about Google’s results systems using these more sophisticated queries.
My question is, why does Google effectively hide these tools from us?  I have gotten so frustrated looking for something specific while only knowing a few ways to narrow my google results.  These new tools promise to be very helpful.  But why are they coming from some other random site?  Why isn’t this right there on G’s results pages or something? 
Jeez.

If you found this information helpful, please consider making a donation. No amount is too small.

Leave a Reply