Google Guide

What popular toy was originally invented as a type of wallpaper cleaner? What is leg godt, and how can you search for information on the Yoyo庐 toy and make sure to get all of its spellings? Such are the questions we all ask ourselves as we go about our daily chores, yet the answers are elusive; even the mighty Google Search returns a heap of spam and irrelevant information, because we don't know how to formulate our questions in such a way as to get straight to what we need to know. And because there are thousands of spammers and ripoff artists out there who spend their days creating websites to "game" the search engine and get themselves into search returns in which they most definitely do not belong.

If you're a regular Google user, and with apologies to Bing and Yahoo frankly most of us are, then a site such as googleguide.com could be one of the bookmarks you'll return to again and again. Aimed at anyone of any skills from novice to veteran searcher, here you'll find ways to make your searches faster, more accurate and more productive. Some of us might already know a few Google tricks; famously, this is one for finding music tracks by Nirvana, which was featured on LifeHacker a couple of years back:

-inurl:(htm|html|php) intitle:"index of" +"last modified" +"parent directory" +description +size +(wma|mp3) "Nirvana"

and yes, they can get even more complicated than that, allowing you to narrow down your search even further. But did you also know that some of the key expressions can be short and easy to remember too? If you want to see images of the blonde bimbo sorry bombshell, rather than the hotel, then search for Paris Hilton with &imgtype=face and you should get the one but not the other.

googleguide.com covers everything from basic concepts to advanced searches and even includes a guide to how a website should be set up to make money from advertising and improve your place in the search listings. It's not the only resource out there for advanced search information, but it's a very well-rounded, comprehensive and user-friendly one and well worth bookmarking.