Below I have compiled a list of 7 clever Google tricks that I believe everyone should be aware of. Together I think they represent the apex of the grand possibilities associated with Google search manipulation tricks and hacks. Although there are many others out there, these 7 tricks are my all-time favorite. Enjoy yourself.
1. Find the Face Behind the Result – This is a neat trick you can use on a Google Image search to filter the search results so that they include only images of people. How is this useful? Well, it could come in handy if you are looking for images of the prominent people behind popular products, companies, or geographic locations. You can perform this search by appending the code &imgtype=face to the end of the URL address after you perform a standard Google Image search.
- Examples (notice the differences in each URL):
2. Google + Social Media Sites = Quality Free Stuff – If you are on the hunt for free desktop wallpaper, stock images, WordPress templates or the like, using Google to search your favorite social media sites is your best bet. The word “free” in any standard search query immediately attracts spam. Why wade through potential spam in standard search results when numerous social media sites have an active community of users who have already ranked and reviewed the specific free items that interest you. All you have to do is direct Google to search through each of these individual social media sites, and bingo… you find quality content ranked by hundreds of other people.
- Examples:
3. Find Free Anonymous Web Proxies – A free anonymous web proxy site allows any web browser to access other third-party websites by channeling the browser’s connection through the proxy. The web proxy basically acts as a middleman between your web browser and the third-party website you are visiting. Why would you want to do this? There are two common reasons:
- You’re connecting to a public network at a coffee shop or internet café and you want privacy while you browse the web. You don’t want the admin to know every site you visit.
- You want to bypass a web content filter or perhaps a server-side ban on your IP address. Content filtering is common practice on college campus networks. This trick will usually bypass those restrictions.
There are subscription services and applications available such as TOR and paid VPN servers that do the same thing. However, this trick is free and easy to access from anywhere via Google. All you have to do is look through the search results returned by the queries below, find a proxy that works, and enter in the URL of the site you want to browse anonymously.
- Examples:
4. Google for Music, Videos, and Ebooks – Google can be used to conduct a search for almost any file type, including Mp3s, PDFs, and videos. Open web directories are one of the easiest places to quickly find an endless quantity of freely downloadable files. This is an oldie, but it’s a goodie! Why thousands of webmasters incessantly fail to secure their web severs will continue to boggle our minds.
- Examples:
- Find Music: -inurl:(htm|html|php) intitle:”index of” +”last modified” +”parent directory” +description +size +(wma|mp3) “Counting Crows”
- Find Videos: -inurl:(htm|html|php) intitle:”index of” +”last modified” +”parent directory” +description +size +(mpg|wmv) “chapelle”
- Find Ebooks: -inurl:(htm|html|php) intitle:”index of” +”last modified” +”parent directory” +description +size +(pdf|doc) “george orwell 1984?
- More info.
5. Browse Open Webcams Worldwide – Take a randomized streaming video tour of the world by searching Google for live open access video webcams. This may not be the most productive Google trick ever, but it sure is fun! (Note: you may be prompted to install an ActiveX control or the Java runtime environment which allows your browser to view certain video stream formats.)
- Examples:
- Axis Webcams: inurl:/view.shtml or inurl:view/index.shtml
- Cannon Webcams: sample/LvAppl/
- MOBOTIX Webcams: control/userimage.html
- FlexWatch Webcams: /app/idxas.html
- JVC Webcams: intitle: intitle:”V.Networks [Motion Picture(Java)]”
- More info. – More info.
6. Judge a Site by its Image – Find out what a site is all about by looking at a random selection of the images hosted on its web pages. Even if you are somewhat familiar with the target site’s content, this can be an entertaining little exercise. You will almost surely find something you didn’t expect to see. All you have to do is use Google’s site: operator to target a domain in an image search.
7. Results Based on Third-Party Opinion – Sometimes you can get a better idea of the content located within a website by reading how other websites refer to that site’s content. The allinanchor: Google search operator can save you large quantities of time when a normal textual based search query fails to fetch the information you desire. It conducts a search based on keywords used strictly in the anchor text, or linking text, of third party sites that link to the web pages returned by the search query. In other words, this operator filters your search results in a way such that Google ignores the title and content of the returned web pages, but instead bases the search relevance on the keywords that other sites use to reference the results. It can add a whole new dimension of variety to your search results.
- Examples (notice the added variety between search results):
- allinanchor:”google hacks” vs. basic search for Google hacks
- allinanchor:”wordpress exploits” vs. basic search for WordPress exploits
- More info.
Bonus Material:
Here is a list of my favorite Google advanced search operators, operator combinations, and related uses:
- link:URL = lists other pages that link to the URL.
- related:URL = lists other pages that are related to the URL.
- site:domain.com “search term = restricts search results to the given domain.
- allinurl:WORDS = shows only pages with all search terms in the url.
- inurl:WORD = like allinurl: but filters the URL based on the first term only.
- allintitle:WORD = shows only results with terms in title.
- intitle:WORD = similar to allintitle, but only for the next word.
- cache:URL = will show the Google cached version of the URL.
- info:URL = will show a page containing links to related searches, backlinks, and pages containing the url. This is the same as typing the url into the search box.
- filetype:SOMEFILETYPE = will restrict searches to that filetype
- -filetype:SOMEFILETYPE = will remove that file type from the search.
- site:www.somesite.net “+www.somesite.net” = shows you how many pages of your site are indexed by google
- allintext: = searches only within text of pages, but not in the links or page title
- allinlinks: = searches only within links, not text or title
- WordA OR WordB = search for either the word A or B
- “Word” OR “Phrase” = search exact word or phrase
- WordA -WordB = find word A but filter results that include word B
- WordA +WordB = results much contain both Word A and Word B
- ~WORD = looks up the word and its synonyms
- ~WORD -WORD = looks up only the synonyms to the word
- More info.
Want more info on Google Hacking? These 3 books are must reads:
LeoStewart says
Woah, I tried to ‘judge digg by its images’ by clicking on the second image that came up, and I must admit I was impressed.
Take a look!!! 🙂
suxmonkey says
Great list – well organized and well worth bookmarking for future use. I like the clever ways to get around what are typically spam results associated with words like ‘free’.
LVflashGuru says
Good read! But your service provider wants to update your article to the even more handy “5 Or So Ways to Avoid Exceeding Your CPU QUOTA”.
Get e new host or start caching your php scripts.
deltabourne says
They neglected possibly the best Google trick:
#8. Buy stock at 200 a share, sell at 500 a share, and laugh all the way to the bank when the stock topples because of pie-in-the-sky earnings expectations and misguided investor strategies in the company
psiloken says
I was surprised not to see the “define:” prefix in there. I constantly use Google as a dictionary. Just open the browser, hit CTRL+K, then type in something like:
define: pizza
Voila!
Karl Gechlik says
Awesome list guys. We would love to share it with our readers on AskTheAdmin.Com Do you mind?
Keep up the great blogging from your friends @ AskTheAdmin!
SoundsLike says
Great hidden Google features that you won’t find on most long winded ‘Advanced Search’ pages. Much appreciated.
ventralnet says
Google will do conversions for you as well….
Type in something like
102321 miles to kilometers
or
2 cups to tablespoons
I haven’t really found a conversion it doesn’t do
expat001 says
The web cam trick is amazing!
HonoredMule says
Wow…these are actually good and not necessarily obvious.
markus941 says
Bookmarked. Great list of tips and one of the best ways I’ve ever seen them explained. Kudos (and congrats on the Digg).
subcorpus says
these are really good pointers …
i’m surely gonna use ’em to find some ebooks …
thanks for sharing … appreciated …
What is a Google? says
Bookmarked, Dugg, and Stumbled. Very nice. Even though all these tricks are listing right there on Google (except for the face), this has some great real-world applications. Where did you learn the face trick, though?
Decision says
Anything that comes out from the guy who put together “Google2Napster” is OK with me.
Dale Carbullido says
party like a rockstar totally dude!!!!!!! OOPS I DIDNT USE ALL CAPS!!!! GREAT STUFF!!!
Don says
Nice post man. I will have to try this stuff out.
Kiran says
Wow!! Nice compilation of GTricks 🙂 Lotta freebies made easier…. Looking forward to even more tricks,yep,there are lot more just to be explored… Let the world know Marc 🙂
Liam Delahunty says
allinanchor:keyword is a favourite operator of mine as you get sites that people have linked to using specific terms.
Also I like to use google as a calculator:
just search for the sum you want to calculate “6 / 7” or try a currency conversion “£100 in $”
Without quotes to get the result, with quotes to find the string on a page.
Gopinath M says
Wow…so much of useful information.
jim says
Very informative article. Will save me lots of time. Thanks
Aria Rajasa says
Nice tips! Will be using google to find books 😀
Mike says
Bookmarked it! Very nice
Cheers
http://www.weefly.com
compuneo says
Very useful information about google. Thank you!
Matias says
Thanks for that 🙂 excellent list
M. Jama says
Hey guys this is was very interesting read, I was always intrigued by google data mining, I have little bits and pieces more to add for example:
You could get free legit Windows Xp Keys using Google and Belarc advicer, just fire up your Google and type the following
“Microsoft – Windows XP” “Belarc Advisor Current Profile”
Or you Could view live webcam feeds easily by
# In the search bar, type in inurl:”viewerframe?mode refresh”
# Click on any one of the results to access the corresponding web-enabled camera!
you could even zoom in and out or even move them around
praveer says
Thank you. What a relief to be able to find stuff in a different way! I really appreciate your generosity in sharing these little gems.
praveer
naser says
Those are some good tips. I’ve seen many websites claiming they are the only authors of unique Google Hacks, but most of the time these hacks are repetitive. Your list seems a step ahead of most.
I try to post some neat Google hacks to my site as well.
AlleyKat says
This article provides some very interesting methods to search Google, but seriously neglects mentioning the inherent privacy dangers of some of these methods and their results.
This turns a very useful set of tips into a serious threat to privacy and security and leaves way too broad avenues for spammers and malicious users to abuse (i.e. webcam trick, open proxy trick, open directory trick).
Google is and will remain the ultimate source for any given kind of information, but without fair warnings, this article is as dangerous as it is useful, in its own right.
Marc says
I’d like to send out a big thanks to everyone for helping this post hit the front page of Digg, Reddit, Del.icio.us, Furl, Lifehacker, and Download Squad. I’m truly glad that you all enjoyed the article.
For all of you Google nuts out there, I wrote another article last night on the pitfalls associated with being anonymous on Google (i.e. when Google doesn’t associate your name with you). Check it out if you get a chance:
The Google Anonymous are Safe and Jobless
Enjoy yourselves out there! 😉
WebMarketEdge says
Searching for videos, music, etc. with Google inurl: (#4) doesn’t really work as well as it used to. Many of the results that are returned are faked index pages to attract visitors or get ad clicks, or put there to root out downloaders.
Great tips though! I tried a face search for my name and lo and behold…
abhisek says
awesome! simply awesome!
LourdesGrace says
Great site to have on hand…well worth bookmarking.
Panneer says
Excellent techniques, May be I will start following your way to Google. Thanks a lot!!
Jessie says
This is a quality post worth keeping for future reference. Especially that face thing… 🙂
Andy Young says
I didn’t search through all of the comments for your post, but here is another one. This is more of a browser hack than a search trick, I suppose,but works best on google.
http://andyyoung.name/wordpress/?p=51
syahid ali says
glad to stumble upon this post. credits to makeuesof.com
Hugh says
Good tips – Really useful ideas on getting the most out of Google’s advanced search operators.