Tip #10: Use Google’s Other Specialized Searches

The Google Directory isn’t the only alternative Google offers to its main search engine. Depending on the type of search you’re doing, you may get better results by using one of Google’s more specialized search sites. These include:

• Froogle searches online shopping sites for the lowest prices on specific products.
• Google Answers is a paid service that directs your queries to a team of professional researchers—great for when you have more involved questions that you can’t answer with a simple search query.
• Google Apple Macintosh Search searches the main http://www.apple.com domain and other Apple-related sites.
• Google Blog Search searches blogs and blog postings.
• Google Book Search searches the full text of hundreds of thousands of fiction and non-fiction books.
• Google BSD UNIX Search searches a variety of sites that specialize in the BSD version of the UNIX operating system.
• Google Groups searches the UseNet archives for relevant articles and postings.
• Google Linux Search searches a variety of Linux-related sites.
• Google Microsoft Search searches the main http://www.microsoft.com domain and other Microsoft-related sites.
• Google News searches a variety of news sites for up-to-the-minute news headlines—as well as historical newspaper archives dating back two centuries.
• Google Scholar searches a database of scholarly journals, articles, papers, theses, and books, as well as select university and research libraries.
• Google U.S. Government Search searches a variety of U.S. government websites—which makes it the best place to search for official government forms, information, reports, and the like.
• Google University Search searches a database of more than 600 university websites—great for finding course schedules, admission information, and the like