Posts tagged google
Let Me Google That For You
Feb 17th
Hey folks,
Have you ever been completely annoyed by people asking you questions that they could have totally answered on their own?
Most people don’t realize that a well formed web query is just as good as asking the right person the right question at the right time. Google, for most people, is just that person. Some of the more complicated queries actually do warrant your newb friends to ask you for a good set of query terms, even using the more advanced search modifiers.
But most of the questions I have to field during my day to day are questions that could have been easily answered, had the person asking put some thought or effort into it. Questions such as “what’s the url for ask the admin?”
We all know that’s a stupid question. Ask The Admin prides itself on being very search engine friendly, especially when looking for the site itself!
Enter Let Me Google That For You, or more easily LMGTFY.com. This nifty little service allows you to perform the search for your friend or colleague who just cant form the words together themselves. But instead of giving your dear friend a fish, so to speak, you’re actually giving your friend a fishing pole. You’re basically telling them, “You could have googled this yourself, look how simple it could have been for you. You could have completely avoided bothering me during my busy day.”
So, to answer the question above “What’s the url for Ask The Admin?”
browsing over to http://lmgtfy.com/?q=asktheadmin.com yields a search page resembling googles.
Except now, when you search , it provides you a tinyurl, which you can send back to your inquisitive friend rather than the url of the actual search result.
Click to see sample results here
Nifty right?
-enjoy
Commodore64 (the one you used to play Bruce Lee on,) ,8,1
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Keyboardr Lets You Search Using Only The Keyboard
Apr 13th
This is a really interesting search engine that caught my eye today which I happened to stumble upon and I really like it. I have been using Google or Live search for years now with an occasional visit to Yahoo. There have not been any great innovations in the search engine realm in years. But this is something I can sink my teeth into.
It is no secret that I love to use my keyboard – no matter if it is typing out console commands, browsing in dos or command line ftp. It might be the inner geek in me but I still love it.
That is where Keyboardr comes in. You simply browse to their site and start typing.
Let’s take a look at it:
I searched for Conficker the April Fool’s Worm that was supposed to ramp up its carnage yesterday. As soon as I started typing, results are displayed below. You select what you want by hitting the arrow keys. If you continue typing, your results will filter all without hitting your mouse or enter yet.
I added "AskTheAdmin" to my query and was returned with the following items. I want the first selection so I hit the enter key on my keyboard.
It opens a new tab in Firefox and I can hit Control + Tab to cycle through my tabs. Keyboardr also separates your search results into normal Google results in the center. Google Images and YouTube on the right and Google Blog results below.
The above images and YouTube videos came up with the AskTheAdmin query. I simply hit my right arrow key and it moved over to that part of the screen and upon hitting enter that item will open up in a new tab.
The author talks about Keyboardr on his blog, this little quote struck me so I thought I would share it with you:
In the first place keyboardr is a meta-search. You get Google, Wikipedia, Youtube altogether. The instant search and the keyboard navigation are replacing the feeling of "searching" with the feeling of "launching".
he goes on to give us a few tips and tricks
- Pressing ESC resets the search, takes you back to the clock instantly !
- One thing only a few know is, google is a all-in-one search. Try searching for "imdb Matrix". Or "lastfm james brown". Or "php str_replace".
- A feature often missed by the users eye, is the "All results" links to get the full version of each search engine. E.g. you need to calculate "5+5", "define:word" or check "weather cologne" then you just open "All results" from Google, right above the results, to get your answers from Google.
Do you use any sort of non-traditional search engines? How is that working out for ya? Please share them with us in the comments!
How can I view a web page that used to be there but isn’t anymore?
Jan 5th
Don’t you just hate those Four Oh Four errors? This page can not be displayed…
We wont judge you. Whether it be porn or work related. For good or evil…
The page used to be there. But where did it go? Who cares – We are going to show you how to bring it back!
After being overwhelmed with emails, from amazed readers, after we resurrected the website about the torrent tracker infiltration by a security company. Reader after reader sent us emails inquiring about this magic cache and how to access it.
See the black circle around the word cached? Yup that is your time machine. You will get a snapshot of the page the last time Google crawled it.
Hit this trick/feature up after take down notices or traffic prevents you from seeing what you want to see… Get rid of that a big 404.
Its not always 100 percent functional but it will get you the guts of the site.
How long before Google gets those take down notices for their cache?
How to let Google do your Googling!
Aug 21st
So you have the same repetitive searches you run every day? How about you let Google run the searches for you and hit you with any new sites that have popped up since your last search? This is great for almost anything! All the PR companies we deal with use this habitually.
Just go to http://www.Google.com/Alerts and sign up for an “Alert”. this is what will be searched and returned to you via email:
As you can see by the above screen shot – we have daily updates hitting us on the hip whenever someone posts something about AskTheAdmin. Works great for watching people talk shit and such :)
This is just one of Google’s many untapped resources. Check out this great article from Lifehacker on the top 10 Google Products you probably forgot about!
How can I get quick Flight Status while i’m mobile?
Jul 2nd
So this nifty obscure use of Google really helps us out on the go. We fire up our mobile browser (whose home page is Google) and type in our Airline and flight number like so:
And Google does the hard work and gives you what you need to see! This will work from any Internet terminal and not just your mobile. For more obscure uses of Google like currency and metrics conversion check out this LifeHacker post. Do you have any other Google tricks or hacks? Put us on! Let us know in the comments!
Can Google News Help My Site?
Mar 13th
Hey everyone! Scott here from AndroidGuys, doing a little guest blogging today for AskTheAdmin. Thanks to Karl and the other guys for allowing me the opportunity to reach out and talk with his audience.
A common concern with bloggers is where they show up on a Google search and there’s a good reason for this; If you don’t show up on pages 1 or 2, then you run the risk of not getting the exposure you want. Well there’s another option out there for traffic potential that might be available to you and it’s offered by Google as well. If the subject of this article wasn’t a dead giveaway, it’s called Google News.
Take a minute to have a look… I’ll wait for ya.
Pretty sweet huh? It has become my preferred place to search for news and late-breaking announcements. What they do is combine news from thousands of sources and give you a one-stop-shop to find what you’re looking for. Why bother going to CNN, FoxNews, and MSNBC when you can see what each of them are saying at once?
One of the best features about Google News is that you can subscribe to news feeds. Let’s say you want to be alerted anytime a news article goes up on “Roger Clemens”. Right now, if you did a news search for him, there are articles listed by
That’s right, depending on what your blog/site is about, you stand a decent chance of getting it listed under Google News. At AndroidGuys, we write about Android, the Open Handset Alliance, and all the other cell phone stuff in between. To compile our articles, we used Google News to gather sources of information and we subscribed to keywords that were relevant to our site. After a few weeks, we realized that we were consistently seeing the same sites showing up, including tech blogs. After reading a few of them we realized that our opinion pieces were just as well written as some of these “news sources” so we naturally started wondering how we could get our articles in there too. It didn’t take a lot of work as Google makes it very easy to submit your site as a source.
The Benefits
Getting your site listed on Google News brings you and your site a few advantages. Here are three big ones.
- Traffic – Number one on everybody’s list. You gain yet another place to show off your name and writing skills.
- Credibility – Having your name show up next to PC World, ZDNet, and InformationWeek gives off the impression that you know what you’re talking about.
- Delivery – Ok, so maybe you don’t have a ton of subscribers to your site. That’s okay because someone might be subscribed to Google News under the term “Barry Bonds Steroids”. Your opinion piece on whether or not he should go into the Hall of Fame might show up in someone’s inbox next to a Sports Illustrated article. Your content is pushed out to people through RSS. In fact, depending on the focus of your site, people can be inadvertently subscribed to your site. The right mix of keywords could have your message delivered to thousands of people at one time.
Sign Up
It’s simple to submit your content for consideration. Just head to the bottom of Google News where it says “Help for Publishers” and check out the topic that might be best suited for your needs. If all you want to do is recommend your site for inclusion, then just click here. It’s pretty easy from there! Google will take a look at your site and find out whether or not it might a good fit to have you in there. An actual person will get back to you if they have questions so don’t worry about trying to win over a computer’s heart.
From the day I asked to be considered, it was less than 10 days before our site received traffic from Google News. A large chunk of our referrals come from here and we get the sense that it is much “better” traffic as it is from people looking for news and not just whatever shows up under searches. Every so often, we’ll get a visitor searching the news for a term that we never even realized we wrote about. This traffic was all free too, courtesy of Google.
What are you waiting for? Submit your site for consideration! If your writing is good and your site is appealing, then you’ll be getting subscribers, referrals, and return visits like never before.
If you’re interested in Google Android and/or cell phone news, please head over to AndroidGuys or subscribe to our feed! Thanks again to AskTheAdmin for letting me drop by today.
