Use Google Wildcard Searches To Find Relevant Information

by Monika Mundell on February 29, 2008

in Blogging Tips

When searching for goodies on Google we can often find some amazing information. I’m the kind of person who uses Google a lot. When I need info on my writing assignments Google is where I go to find it. Yes, I’m aware that Technorati and Del.ici.ous are also great platforms on which to find relevant information.

One nifty trick that has allowed me to pull some great PDF’s, is to use a PDF wildcard search. To do this I go to Google and insert the word pdf followed by a colon and the keyword I’m targeting in inverted commas. The inverted commas are there to eliminate all unrelated content and minimize what’s left to the most appropriate searches.

google wildcard searches

The results will return many PDF’s that are related to my search. You can see this on the next image. If you look closely at the URLs you’ll see that most of them are PDF’s.

google wildcard searches results

While scrolling several pages on these kind of results I often come across some really good ebooks. This is especially useful when we are looking for inspiration on a new project or even writing an ebook ourselves.

But wait there is more

Another Google wildcard search I just learned from a good friend is using the *. Doing wildcard searches using this as part of a sentence will return a range of interesting results.

wildcard google search

The results clearly show stuff that is related to what people might think about. With a bit of fantasy this simple Google wildcard search could give you exactly what you are looking for.

google search

Next time you struggle to find information you need try a Google wildcard search and see what you’ll find instead.

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{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }

1 Life is Colourful February 29, 2008 at 9:36 am

Sorry Monika, but I am a QA guy by nature.

“…To do this I go to Google and insert the word pdf followed by a column…”

should be

“…To do this I go to Google and insert the word pdf followed by a colon…”

I hope you don’t mind [I know you don't] rather you got a reader who thoroughly reads the post, isn’t it :)

2 Monika Mundell February 29, 2008 at 11:29 am

@ Life is Colourful: hey no worries. I appreciate the hint and have rectified it. LOL, column how silly. ;-)

3 Suzie Cheel March 6, 2008 at 12:56 am

thanks for the tip

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