The path to be the Google Ninja
And to me, it’s only just these four things
Apparently, not all google search are created equal. If you are not aware, there are tons of tips for google articles that lets you know how you can google more effectively. While there are too many of those commands to remember for just a simple google search, I have found myself keep going back to only 4 commands that I would actually use out of all the Google ninja commands. They are:
1. Double quotes for exact match
"That thing exactly"2. site: for specific site search
something specific site:SpecificThings.com3. filetype: for some specific types of files, usually PDFs
some report filetype:pdf4. The ‘+’ sign for more than one search phrase with double quotes
"Apple" + "Pen" + "Pineapple" + "Pen"And that’s it! Just these four things and you can be quite a Google Ninja to look for almost anything that you possible can look for on the internet.
Some Search Queries Examples
Here are some of the frequent search patterns when I am trying to look for information, just to name a few (yes, you can just copy and paste and can see what happens for yourselves!):
Big ideas, aka the ones that make a dent in the universe
- site:gatesnotes.com
- site:stratechery.com
- site:ted.com
- site:cbinsights.com
For example, if I want to check out if Bill Gates have talked about something nuclear energy related, I just simply do:
nuclear energy site:gatesnotes.comor ticktok site:stratechery.com
Whispers from the little birds, aka word of mouth
- site:news.ycombinator.com
- site:reddit.com
- site:quora.com
This usually happens when I first heard of some developer tools, I would look them up at hackernews:
gpt-3 site:news.ycombinator.comChina related content
- site:caixinglobal.com
- site:36kr.cn
- site:zhihu.com
While there is Baidu, I found Google still be of a more robust search engine despite the fact that it hasn’t been in China for over 10 years now, not sure why that is the case though…
some random new startup from China site:36kr.comFormal report stuff from banks and consultancy
- site:mckinsey.com
- site:goldmansachs.com
- some topic filetype:pdf
This is thanks to all the reports and powerpoint slides that I have to make in order to not failed the course back when I was at University. I usually just ended up scrolling through the report and checking whether their claims are valid.
space satellite market filetype:pdfDeveloper stuff
- site:docs.microsoft.com
- site:kaggle.com
- site:medium.com
Last but not least, the developer stuff. I am surprised that sometimes Google is actually a better search engine for Microsoft’s documentation! When there are some very niche questions that been throw at me back when I was at Microsoft, that’s how I secretly solves them. Please keep that a secret okay?
wsl nodejs docker site:docs.microsoft.comAny thoughts for ninja hacks from you?
So, what about you? Interested to learn from other Google Ninja on how and where they can find stuff been left at the corner of the internet, feel free to just drop a comment below!
