How to get the best results from Google for VB questions? 2

[happyabc]

It is often said that using Google is the best way of getting answers to VB ( or any other programming ) questions. But my questions seem to turn up mostly low grade results. Many of them are forum queries that may not even have been answered. What I am usually interetsed in is detailed and exhaustive discussion of particular topics. How to formulate my queries to get such results?

 

[chiph]

Try

http://www.google.com/microsoft

You'll still end up with a lot of VB.NET results, but it's better than the main search page.

BTW, this is a good reason to switch to .NET -- the VB6-specific info is gradually disappearing from the Internet.

Chip H.


If you want to get the best response to a question, please check out FAQ222-2244 first

 

[GlenJohnson]

I did a google search once, and the first link was back to the question I had posted in Tek-Tips.


Glen A. Johnson
If you're from Northern Illinois/Southern Wisconsin check out Tek-Tips in Chicago, Illinois Forum.

TTinChicago

 

[MasterRacker]

You can try

http://www.alltheweb.com.

They also have a huge index but use different algorithms. When I'm really digging I alternate between them and Google.


Jeff
The future is already here - it's just not widely distributed yet...

 

[happyabc]

AllTheWeb has been frozen by its new owners:

http://www.pandia.com/sw-2004/08-yahoo.html

What about dedicated search engines e.g. CodeHound? ( are there others like it )?

 

[MasterRacker]

Damn. I hate portals. AllTheWeb was my favorite #2 search engine.


Jeff
The future is already here - it's just not widely distributed yet...

 

[dilettante]

Google does have that handy "-" feature:

"visual basic" class implements -net

It may filter out a few responses, but I'd start with the exclusion first to weed out those annoying .Net hits. ;-)

You can also search for authoritative (if not complete) hits:

"visual basic" class implements -net site:microsoft.com

 

[happyabc]

Not bad:

""visual basic" dataenvironment -net site:microsoft.com"

produced only 83 results. What I would like to do is to extend the sites to the best on the Web ( any proposals ) ( assuming one can code multiple site: commands in the same query

 

[dilettante]

There are clearly limitations, but Google's advanced search offers a form that can guide you further.

allintitle: "yellow running man" -site:aol.com -filetypes

The search string above looks for the phrase "yellow running man" only in page titles, and excludes hits from aol.com and any postscript files.

There is also the "or" operator, but I don't think it works on sites, only keywords or phrases.

The advanced search page does have links to a few topic-specific searches such as Microsoft, Apple, Linux, Catalogs, U.S. Government, etc.

Look for the small-print "advanced search" link on the standard Google search page.

 

[bbarr]

there's a book, "Google Hacks", I think it's an O'Reilly book. It shows you how to do searches like the "-net" example above, searching for one word but not another, or by dates, or how word order effects the search results.