Isn't Google great? You just type in what you want and poof.... literally thousands of links appear, usually pointing you in the direction of something close to what you're looking for. Remember when you had to go to the library and use the "Dewey Decimal System in a Card Catalog?" That was light years ago.
Now, you can look up that same information 1000 times faster at a touch of a keystroke without even leaving your bedroom. What progress. Even better, I learned something the other day that has made using Google even more efficient for me. Some of you tech/Google savvy people will read what I'm about to say and think... "boy is this guy dumb." You smart folks can now press the fast forward button and move to the front of the classroom where the geniuses sit. I'll explain where I'm going with this to everyone else by highlighting a real life story below.
If you've read through my Blog at all, you've probably noticed that I like to "kick it" a bit with the wonderfully talented Jane Turley over at The Witty Ways Of A Wayward Wife. It's a wacky relationship, but we have our fun with each other. So the other day while I was putting together my "TED" post, I remembered that Jane had written some time ago about the movie TED and included a video clip. So being the dutiful Blogger that I am, I sauntered over to her blog to locate her post so that I could link to it. That's when the trouble started. When I arrived, I noticed that in her update to her blog layout, she had removed the "search box." Egad! Now I was forced to sift through hundreds of zany posts to find the one post I was looking for. An hour later with pain in my side from laughing at all of her craziness, I decided to give up the search. I completed my post without the associated link. So here's what I learned today that would have helped me over a week ago: You can actually direct Goggle to search within a website or domain even when there's no search engine box inside of the site. Duh! I know.... Again, for those of you who, like me, didn't know this.
Here's how you do it:
The Solution: Open a google search box and Type "Site:" followed by the URL of the website you'd like to search. Then add your search terms. This allows you to search for terms within the website.
Here's what I should have done to find the post on Jane's site:
Typed "site:www.janeturley.net ted"
and Bingo... 4 post would have appeared in the results.
Here's the one I wanted to link to: Trouble In The School Changing Rooms
So there you have it. If you want to read more about Google secrets and shortcuts,
go to: 14 Google Search Tricks That Make Life A Whole Lot Easier.
Happy Googling!
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