BECOME A BETTER DEVELOPER

Mastering Google Search (I'm using it now)

Ye Win03/03/2016

Are you using Google machine the correct way when it comes to searching for stuff? If you’re like me, you are using Google daily to search for a variety of things. However, did you know there was a way to use Google to find items quicker and easier?

What a lot of people don't realize is that Google has a lot of powerful tricks hidden up it's sleeve.

Here are some of those commands and how they can be best used by a developer.

Exact Phrase SearchIf you wrap part or all of your search with quotation marks, Google will search for the exact phrase entered, unlike normal where it searches for the words individually.

As a developer, this can be really useful when searching for exception strings.

Example"Failed to parse configuration at:

logging.appenders.[0]“

The exact exception text is in the quotations, but I've then thrown in some extra terms that are relevant to help focus. 

Google Results:

Exclude Term

There can be a lot of overlap in our little world of programming. Projects with similar names and overloaded terms can make it very frustrating when combing through search results.  It's really easy to exclude a word from search results though; simply add a "-" before a word.

ExampleSpark Java -Apache

Annoyingly in Java there is sparkjava and Apache Spark.  If searching for the former, you can remove all Apache based results with ease.

Google Results:

Now you can see the results which are not include Apache.

Related Terms

Want to know what the alternatives are to a technology?  The related keyword has your back.  It expects a URL and will return websites which have a similar content.  In practice, I've found it useful for bringing up alternative technologies or frameworks, or finding things which are additive and compatible.

Examplerelated:mongodb.org

Google Results:

We now have a list of similar and alternative NoSQL databases to MongoDB.

File Type

Did you know you can mandate the type of file you want to search for in Google?  This can be really useful when looking for printable cheatsheets as you can specify PDF files, although this can be applicable to a host of searches.

ExampleJava Beginner filetype:PDF

Google Results:

We now have a list of pdf type Java in the results.

Search Within a Site

I often find that the search on a website or forum is terrible.  Fortunately, Google can rescue the situation.  It's possible to specify Google specifically search a site or subdomain.  

Exampleequals vs == in java site:stackoverflow.com

Google Results:

All results are from stackoverflow.com

Conclusions,

Okay, I will stop my slide after present 5 Google search tricks especially for developers.

But, there are still a lot of powerful tricks in Google search. You can refer from in my References slide.

If you want to more powerful at Google search, refer to these references slide to becoming mastering in Google.

You can see what I am up to on:‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/toyewinStackOverflow: http://stackoverflow.com/users/4352728/ye-winSlideShare: http://www.slideshare.net/mysky14Email me: yewin29081990@gmail.com

Thank for reading!!

References• http://kimgarst.com/12-quick-and-easy-tips-to-mastering-google-search

• https://dzone.com/articles/become-a-better-programmer-by-mastering-google?edition=138254&utm_source=Spotlight&utm_medium=email&utm_content=queue&utm_campaign=web%20dev%202016-02-04