Tweeking Google URLS

To get the most from a google search you can tweak the URL of your searches.  This post looks at how to have the date a page was created, and longer snippets show up in your search results:

It was recently pointed out in a post on lifehacker. They got the idea (from digital inspitation), that you can find out the date that google thinks a page was first uploaded by cutting and pasting this line to the end of your URL:

&as_qdr=y15

your searches should now have dates in front of the snippets. it should look like this:

This got thinking about one of my favorite feature in the new googles search options, the ability to get longer snippets in your search results. (that means more text from each pages being displayed in the search results). Playing with the URL I discovered that instead of clicking through to this option, you can simply cut and paste the following to the end of the url of your google searches.

&tbs=sts:1

If you are using google to do research, these two tweaks will help you get to the really good stuff. And, if you want to get these options added to your searches automatically, you can cut and paste the following link into you browser, and bookmark it (or make it your home page.) 

www.google.ca/search?q=example&hl=en&sa=N&output=search&tbs=qdr:y15,sts:1

It should give you a search for the word "example", but if replace it with a new word the added features will remain. (i have played around with this a bit, but if it doesn't work for you please let  me know.)

WAYBACK MACHINE - PART 1

The Wayback Machine is a tool that lets you look at old copies of a website.

 Want to see what city council was saying 2 years ago? Want to see what the google home page looked like in 1998? Want to browse a web site that has gone off line? Want to find old copies of a document that was posted online?     ...Then this is the tool to use.

Just go to Archive.org. enter a URL in the search bar, and click the "take me back button". you will now have a page with a list of various dates. click on a date and you will see what the site looked like on that date, and from there you can browse around. 

The Wayback Machine sends robots all over the web taking snap shots of pages, in the same way that google does. While google tries to get the most rerent version of a site, throwing out old copies, the wayback machine on the other hand holds on to these copies, and lets you see old versions.

If you want to learn more about the Archive .org, the group that runs the wayback machine, then check out the following  20 min video. There is only about 1 minute that covers the Wayback machine (at 17:30), but it give sense of what the broader project of Archive.org is about. check it out here: 

I will soon put up some more posts on the way machine that look at how to make it useful, and what advanced search features you can put to use to get the most from this tool...