Google Search... getting the BEST resources?!

J

joshjared

0
How do I find the best on the web every time I search for a specific topic?

Is it at all possible to ensure I get the most comprehensive resources every single time so I can focus my research only on those aggregated and most popular few, websites, forums and blogs?

I keep running into the problem of Information Overload which sometimes leads to meltdown... "where on earth do i start and know that i am getting the best?!"

In the past I have been doing this by typing the phrase 'Top 10' with every google search entry so that I acquire the Top 10 lists for that search.

Does anyone have any ideas or advise ?

All the best,
Josh
 
My favourite google tips are:

1) The minus (-) symbol. This removes irrelevant words from your search. For example, if you wanted to do a search about Microsoft Bing and didn't want any Chandler-Bing-from-Friends related hits, you could search for Bing -Chandler or Bing -Chandler -Friends. This also works if you want to avoid results from particular websites; I might search for charger N95 -ebay with Google Product Search to avoid getting loads of ebay hits.

2) The filetype: search. I usually use this for PDF files, when I want to find some longer reports or academic articles. I've also looked for filetype: xls, which is a handy way to find Excel templates. As an example, you could search for GTD filetype: pdf or expenditure filetype: xls.

NOTE: There shouldn't be a space between filetype: and pdf or xls; without a space, they make :p and :x.

I don't know if either of those tips are particularly useful for the kind of searches you're doing, but they've both definitely made my online searches more productive!
 
What about going to amazon.com buying and reading a good (gasp) book? That would give you a head-start on more specialized search terms.

Also shared bookmarking sites like delicious, digg, reddit are similiar to your top-10 idea.
 
For technical searches, use Google Scholar, not standard Google.
http://scholar.google.com/

It focuses specifically on the various peer-reviewed journals.

There are also lots of field-specific search engines and aggregators out there.

Katherine
 
clango;67579 said:
Try also Wolfram Alpha I found it very interesting and focused
Click to expand...

For me it's worthless, not near enough depth in the technical areas I was searching and missed some critical common data. Has potential but needs a lot of work to make it useful for my searching
 
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