The bloggers over at Lifehacker’s have compiled a list of twenty search engine helpers. They describe Search Engine Helpers as “the hamburger in the popular (at least in my house) Hamburger Helper pre-packaged dinners. You have to add hamburger in order to make the dinner taste good and come out the way it’s supposed to; if you didn’t, you’d get a weird mishmash of seasoning and crunchy pasta. Search helpers are a search engine’s hamburger – once you add them, the search results casserole smells good, looks tasty, and won’t go bad in the fridge.”
All of the twenty entries have been checked with Google, Msn, Yahoo and AskJeeves. The article states differences when they exist.
Some of the entries deal with “normal searches” and tips for them, like how to use a wildcard search and doing a site search.
A lot deal with specialized commands that narrow the search to specific titles, domains, filetypes aso.
Last but not least the list contains some specific searches for weather information and flight information.
You can check out the whole list here: They also provide a useful Web Search Cheat Sheet that you can print and use for reference.
Here is an overview of all handlers mentioned:
- Exact Phrase in Quotes (“”)
- Exclude Terms with a minus (-)
- Include Terms, no longer functional
- Wildcard search (*)
- Site search (site:)
- Link search (link:)
- Cache, no longer working
- Filetype (filetype:)
- Title Search (title:)
- URL Search (inurl:)
- Search within a specific date range (daterange:201101-201102)
- Word definition (define:)
- Get a stock quote (quote)
- Limit search by country (site:.country extension)
- Convert stuff (value1 in value2)
- Solve a math problem
- Check your flight status (Flight airline and number)
- Check gas prices in your area (gas zip code)
- Check the weather (weather zip code)
Some of the previously mentioned commands have been removed or changed by some of the search engines. We have added the information above.
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