ProductiveWise

Become a Google Search Ninja with Advanced Operators

Eyal Sela — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 22:25:46 +0000

Do you ever feel that if you could only tell Google a bit more about what you’re trying to find, the search results would be much better? Well, as you probably know, Google has some advanced search operators that help to refine search queries. You can use them to better focus your queries by specifying things like which sites to search, use placeholders, search for exact matches, and more. Here is a quick guide to Google’s advanced search operators.

Starting with advancead operators

Double quotation marks (” “) for exact much: When you enclose a phrase in quotation marks, Google returns only pages that contain that exact phrase. The results have to contain all the words and in the exact same order as you wrote them. Search for “The first Twitter user”, for example, and you’ll only get back pages that contain exactly that phrase. This advanced search feature is one of the most useful in my opinion.

Asterisk (*) is a placeholder for one or more words: adding * replaces any number of words in your query. Example: let’s say you want to find articles that teach Google search practices, like this one. You could use the following query for that task:

“how to Search * with Google”

The quotation marks will make sure that you’ll get back pages with that sentence in them. But since there’s Asterisk in the query, you’ll find different versions of it. So, you might get back this sentence: How to Search Faces with Google, this one: How to SearchEffectively with google, or any other variation that matches the query. See the results in the image below or try the query yourself.

(site:) limits the search to specific domain(s): when you encounter a website that does not have a search box, you can use this operator to search it. Simply addsite:www.example.com to the query, where www.example.com is the site’s URL. This will tell Google to search only pages within www.example.com. Example: to search information about libraries in Harvard University we can use this query (note that there is a space between the address and the word ‘libraries’, which is the term we want to find):

site:http://www.harvard.edu/ libraries

Try this query yourself. You can also use site: to search across websites under the same top level domain (such as .gov or .edu). Example: you can find really interesting information about how government related bodies in the US use twitter, with this query:

site:.gov twitter

The results will include webpages under the .gov domain that related to twitter in some way. See the results in the image below or try the query yourself.

The plus sign (+) disables synonyms: Google automatically searches for synonyms and similar words to those in your query. To limit this, add + right before the word(s) you which to keep the same (no space between the + and the word).

Use the or sign (|) for either one of several possibilities: you can make your searches much more effective and efficient by using the | sign (find it on the same key as the Backslash sign- \). What it tells Google is to search either one of the words attached to it. (Note that you can use OR , with capital letters, instead of using the | sign.) Example: you can combine the following four different queries:

“the Facebook guide”

“the youtube ‎guide”

“the linkedin guide”

“The gmail guide”

Into a single query:

‎“the Facebook|youtube|LinkedIn|gmail guide”‎

See the results in the image below or try the query yourself.

Do you have other search tips? Share them with us in the comments!

Post from: ProductiveWise

Become a Google Search Ninja with Advanced Operators

Search Twitter with Google – It’s Great!‎

Eyal Sela — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 11:47:46 +0000

If you’ve ever tried Twitter’s search, you’ve probably found that it’s not very good. Indeed, Other Twitter search alternatives exist, such as Trendistic, Tweefind, Tweetzi, and Twazzup. But wouldn’t you rather just use Google for the task?

To search Twitter with Google, all you need to do is add to the search query a limitation that tells it to search only within Twitter (and not the whole web). To do that, simply add the following string to the query:

site:http://twitter.com

So, for example, to find mentions of this blog, we’ll add the word ‘productivewise’ to the query, as shown below (notice that there is a space between the search term, productivewise, and the sit URL) :

site:http://twitter.com/ productivewise

The results are displayed in the image below.

Click this link to search Google with the above query (opens in a new window).

Search within a specific twitter user tweets

You can also search only within certain user’s tweets by using the link to that user’s profile (and not to Twitter as a whole). So, to search within my profile, you would use this query:

site:http://twitter.com/Eyalsela

Click this link to search Google with the above query (opens in a new window).

Post from: ProductiveWise

Search Twitter with Google – It’s Great!‎

Video – Jimmy Wales speaks at GarageGeeks – October 2009

Eyal Sela — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 03:42:11 +0000

I took this video of Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, at a GarageGeeks meetup. The image is bad but the sound is good. Enjoy.

Jimmy Wales speaks at GarageGeeks – October 2009 from Eyal Sela on Vimeo.

Post from: ProductiveWise

Video – Jimmy Wales speaks at GarageGeeks – October 2009

How to Search the Web Real-Time

Ann Smarty — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 08:20:25 +0000

This is a guest post by Ann Smarty, a social media and search blogger and online entrepreneur.

Real-time search is the latest achievement of web 2.0. Never before was it so easy to speak to the whole world and to be instantly heard. This post overviews the 4 most popular search engines capable of generating fresh results.

It is hard to compare them to choose the best one: there are no winners in this game. They all have some benefits and should be used in particular cases:

Real-time search engine	Data source	How old are the results?	Most important benefit
Twitter	Twitter discussions	Instant	The huge service popularity and thus a large index of data
Facebook	Facebook discussions	Instant	The huge service popularity and thus a large index of data
Google	Google web index	One hour old	Plenty of search opportunities
Friendfeed	Most social networks + all user-added feeds	Instant	Multiple data sources combined

Twitter Search

Twitter search is the most popular real-time search engine nowadays for a few good reasons:

Indexing time: the moment the update goes live, it is already in the index;
Huge database: everyone seems to be on Twitter by now, therefore the user base is huge as well as the number of results for any topic.

Twitter search offers a few really useful advanced search operators, among them:

From this person [from:username]
To this person [to:username]
Referencing this person [@username]
Tweets asking the question [include ? to the search results]
Updates containing positive/negative attitude [include / to the search results]

Let me demonstrate the power of one of the above search operators by the following example: consider searching for negative reviews when researching some product/ service, for example: look for GoDaddy.com dissatisfied customers:

There are plenty of other real-time Twitter-based search engines to check out: CrowdEye, OneRiot, TweetMeme,Collecta

Facebook Search

Facebook search was announced not a long time ago, thus there aren’t as many tools and applications so far as for Twitter search but it is still something that must be given a try. Here’s a quick overview of what you can do with the new facebook search:

search the last 30 days of your news feed for status updates, photos, links, videos and notes being shared by your friends and the Facebook Pages of which you’re a fan.
search for status updates, links and notes of other people who are not your friends but who have chosen to make their updates public;

You can also filter results to see only those that contain links, to get only wall posts and status updates or to only search other people’s notes. Here’s an example of search results page giving you an idea of what people on Facebook think about GoDaddy:

Google Search

While Google doesn’t currently offer the real time search in the sense we’ve discussed above, I found it absolutely necessary to mention it here – Google lets you search one-hour-old results (the search option found in the side panel); so let’s call it “near real-time search”

The reason why I think it should be included here is that Google can search within any site in its index. This means, you can turn any site into a near real-time search platform. This turns particularly useful for huge user-edited sites.

Here’s a real-life example for you: I love tracking online deals because they help me save some money; my favorite tool to do that is Buxr. To find its latest updates on, say, laptops, I need:

To search [site:buxr.com laptops] on Google;
Then click “More options” to open the side panel and click “Past hour” to see the latest updates.

Now, the most obvious question to ask here is why not to use the site built-in search platform. Google gives many more options than any other known search platform. You can use advanced search and side panel search options to display images from the page, see not yet visited results, get only most recent updates, etc.

FriendFeed

Unlike the above three search engines, Friendfeed largely operates external data bases but it is also quite a powerful real time search tool. It combines multiple social networks to generate recent search results.

Friendfeed streamlines relevant results from a number of social networks including Twitter, Delicious, Identi.ca, StumbleUpon, etc plus numerous other sites added by its users. Its search options are quite limited though: the only thing you can do is to provide a search term and hit “Search”: there are no advanced options, sorting or filtering results, etc:

Similar tool aggregating other networks results to check out: Scoopler

Do you use any real-time search engines? Please share your thoughts in the comments!

The guest post is by Ann Smarty, a social media and search blogger and online entrepreneur.

Post from: ProductiveWise

How to Search the Web Real-Time

Google Reader Tips and Practices for Power Users

Eyal Sela — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 14:23:19 +0000

Google reader is probably the best RSS reader available today. Here are some tips and practices for power users (hopefully, you) to help you better manage your RSS reading time and leverage it, tweak Google Reader to use first and second level categorization, and optimize you RSS subscription list.

Use folders to prioritize your reading

At a certain point you’ve probably realize that it is just not possible to read all of the new items you get. One possible solution is to use folders to categorize your feeds. Once you categorized all your feeds, you can read prioritize your reading by urgency level.

For example, I use a folder called ‘Immediate‘ where I put feeds that I want to read the moment they publish something new because it is important for me to know about them as soon as possible. These could be work related or new trends, usually things that if no read within day or two (sometimes less), they became irrelevant.

Other folders I use are ‘friends‘, ‘Podcasts‘, ‘Premier Blogs‘, and some more. I also use a ‘must read‘ folder for things that I want to read sometime, but it doesn’t really matter when (such as family blogs or new WordPress plugins).

Eric Friedman’s post, ‘Prioritizing and Organizing Feeds in Google Reader‘, shows a similar method of using tiers to prioritize RSS reading on Google reader.

Prefix folders for easier categorization

But now a new problem arises. If you are tagging the items you read, you’ll notice that under ‘Feed Settings‘ (where you choose the folders for new feeds) there are tens and even hundreds of folders to choose from. That happens since all the tags and folders are listed in there together.

The solution is the artificially separate the folders from the tags by adding an asterisk sign (*) at the beginning of each folder’s name. This will make the folders show up at the top of the Feed Setting list, making it easier to find the right folder to put new feeds in.

Prefix feeds for Second level categorization

Sometimes, the first level categorization is not enough and you need a second level categorization. That happens when you need to recognize a specific feed among the other feeds in a folder. It is important to recognize the source of an item since it can get a whole other meaning if it was written by one of Google’s blogs or maybe you’re competitor’s blog. But that doesn’t mean you want to create a folder just for them. Yet, you don’t want to invest the effort of reading the name of each item’s source, in addition to reading its headline. After all, one of the advantages RSS offers is the ability to scan items rapidly without distractions.

So, to get a second level categorization, prefix the names of the feeds themselves so that their name will stand out. To change the name of a feed, locate it in the right sidebar (called ‘Subscriptions’), click it, and under “Feed settings” choose ‘Rename subscription‘. Add a unique prefix to the name of the feed. For example, I have prefixed blogs about writing skills with this prefixes: ^^ writing ^^

Optimize your reading list

I believe that it is good practice to subscribe and unsubscribe from feeds as needed. There is no reason to stick to websites that do not provide interesting or useful content; it is reasonable that your tastes and needs will vary over time. Therefore, I have developed a practice that will enable you to optimize Your RSS Subscription List in Google Reader by finding the feeds that are not relevant to you and unsubscribing from them.

To optimize your RSS subscription you should first start using the ‘star item‘ feature. Whenever you read an item that you find interesting or useful, star it (it also make it easier to find these items later). After you’ve been doing it for a few weeks, go to ‘trends‘ and compare the number of stared items with the update frequency of the subscriptions. Relatively, the most frequently updated subscriptions should also be the ones with the highest number of stared items. If you find subscriptions that are updated in high frequency but you did not star a lot of items in them – you should get rid of them. Why? Because the more items a source post, the more stars you would expect it to get. You can read the full post here.

Use automatic sharing to Leverage time spent reading

You can Leverage the time you spend reading by automatically sharing items. The ‘Share‘ feature allows you to publish items to be shared with your friends through Facebook or your readers through your blog or website. When you mark an item as ‘shared‘, what you are actually doing is making it public on your shared Items page (this is my shared items page, by the way).

To get the link to your public page, to as follows:

Click ‘Sharing settings »‘ in the left sidebar (just above ’subscriptions‘).
Scroll down, and under the ‘Your shared items page‘ section, copy the link that says “Preview your shared items page in a new window“

Now you can add it to Facebook as one of the streams in your profiles. Every time you’ll mark item as sheared, all of your friends will see it in your personal stream.

To share your shared items in your blog or website – still under ‘Sharing settings »‘, click the link that says “Add a clip to your web site or blog”, at the end of the page. Follow the instructions to generate an embed code that will display your latest shared items (you can see my shared items in the news section).

Post from: ProductiveWise

Google Reader Tips and Practices for Power Users

Aardvark – Get High Quality Answers in Real Time from Real People

Eyal Sela — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 18:47:04 +0000

I’ve recently added a new tool to my information searching arsenal – Aardvark. I use Google, Google Reader, Twitter, my chat friends and other tools to find information. But Aardvark fills a gap these tools leave open.

Aard what?

At the end point (your side, as a user) all that Aardvark does is take a question you submit, find someone who can answer it and send you back the answer. It does that by searching for a user that is online and has knowledge in the field of the question you asked (and preferably, is from your network on Aardvark). Than it sends him or her question. The answer is sent right back to you, usually within few minuets. Often, you get more then one answers from several different people.

If you are not satisfied with the answer you got, you can easily resubmit it for other people to answer it or asked the ones that already did to elaborate.

Aardvark has two main advantages. The first is that it is easy to submit questions. You can submit question through the actual site and Twitter but the best thing is that you can submit questions straight from Gmail Chat, AIM, Messenger, and Windows Live. This integration into the daily workflow is very comfortable.

The second advantage is that you get a fast, personally tailored answer from another person (rather then one That has been written for someone else and you found it, for example).

What should I use Aardvark for?

Aardvark’s FAQ page suggest using it for the following kinds of questions:

Recommendations

Research help

Advice and second opinions

Tips and discoveries

Get started

After you sign up, add Aardvark to your Instant messaging program. To add it to Google Chat, Search for Aardvark and add it as a chat friend (see image below).

To make sure it works, type ‘Help‘. From now on, all that you have to do is write Aardvark any question in plain English, like you would to a friend. Aardvark will find an answer within a few minutes.

Real examples

As default, the questions you ask and answers you get back are visible only to you (and the few people who are asked to answer them). But if you want, you can make them public.

Here is an example of question I’ve asked and the answers I got back:

And here are some more examples:

Thanks to Omer Perchik for suggesting Aardvark.

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Aardvark – Get High Quality Answers in Real Time from Real People

Survey: How do You Process Online Information?

Eyal Sela — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 17:00:08 +0000

Every day we read, hear, and see tens of web pages if not more. How do you process the useful and interesting information you find online? Do you send it to yourself via email? Do you star it in Google Reader or add tags? Or maybe you just rely on the good old brain to retrieve the right information at the right time?

To participate, write in the comments what are your online information processing methods.

Next month I’ll post a summary of all the answers.

image by kevindooley

Post from: ProductiveWise

Survey: How do You Process Online Information?

Facebook Acquired Friendfeed

Eyal Sela — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 19:55:22 +0000

Facebook has just announced it has acuired Frindfeed. Frindfedd says in thir blog that:

FriendFeed.com will continue to operate normally for the time being. We’re still figuring out our longer-term plans for the product with the Facebook team. As usual, we will communicate openly about our plans as they develop — keep an eye on the FriendFeed News group for updates.

Facebook’s offical press realse:

PALO ALTO, Calif. — August 10, 2009 — Facebook today announced that it has agreed to acquire FriendFeed, the innovative service for sharing online. As part of the agreement, all FriendFeed employees will join Facebook and FriendFeed’s four founders will hold senior roles on Facebook’s engineering and product teams.

“Facebook and FriendFeed share a common vision of giving people tools to share and connect with their friends,” said Bret Taylor, a FriendFeed co-founder and, previously, the group product manager who launched Google Maps. “We can’t wait to join the team and bring many of the innovations we’ve developed at FriendFeed to Facebook’s 250 million users around the world.”

“As we spent time with Mark and his leadership team, we were impressed by the open, creative culture they’ve built and their desire to have us contribute to it,” said Paul Buchheit, another FriendFeed co-founders. Buchheit, the Google engineer behind Gmail and the originator of Google’s “Don’t be evil” motto, added, “It was immediately obvious to us how passionate Facebook’s engineers are about creating simple, ground-breaking ways for people to share, and we are extremely excited to join such a like-minded group.”

Taylor and Buchheit founded FriendFeed along with Jim Norris and Sanjeev Singh in October 2007 after all four played key roles at Google for products like Gmail and Google Maps. At FriendFeed, they’ve brought together a world-class team of engineers and designers.

“Since I first tried FriendFeed, I’ve admired their team for creating such a simple and elegant service for people to share information,” said Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder and CEO. “As this shows, our culture continues to make Facebook a place where the best engineers come to build things quickly that lots of people will use.”

FriendFeed is based in Mountain View, Calif. and has 12 employees. FriendFeed.com will continue to operate normally for the time being as the teams determine the longer term plans for the product.

Financial terms of the acquisition were not released.

Follow the conversation real time

Some more resources

you migt alos whant to learn how to Make Yourself Easier To Find On Facebook by Adding an Alternate Name And IM Nicknames.

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Facebook Acquired Friendfeed

Excel Secrets Discovered – 6 Steps For Perfect Printing

Eyal Sela — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 08:18:50 +0000

Do you get tens of pages out, with some of the columns standing by themselves in an unknown page every time you print out an Excel worksheet? Tired of wasting paper time and time again?

It’s time to get things straight. Let’s see how to print an Excel sheet the right way.

This is an excerpt of a post I wrote on MakeUseOf. To read the full post visit Excel Secrets Discovered – 6 Steps For Perfect Printing.

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Excel Secrets Discovered – 6 Steps For Perfect Printing

20 Social Media Practices to Use in Your Daily Life [Presentation]

Eyal Sela — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 23:23:15 +0000

Two weeks a go I gave a lecture in a social media seminar. Now I’ve translated the presentation I used into English and made it easier to understand without seeing the actual lecture.

The presentation describes 20 social media practices that will help you in your daily life. It includes tools to monitor your web presence, ways to track interesting topics and conversations, methods to find people and to get answers, and more.

It revolves around the following seven categories:

People Database
Keeping in touch and more
Conversation
Search
Collaborating
Monitoring and News
Self monitoring

I’ll be glad to get your feedback and thoughts about it.

Social media in day to day life – Eyal Sela

View more presentations from Eyal Sela.

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20 Social Media Practices to Use in Your Daily Life [Presentation]