Make Google dance… the nerd way.

With the search modifiers described in this article, you can search on Google with a surprising amount of narrowing available. Though the article is mainly about graphing the results of searches, it contains on one handy page all the obscure modifiers that let you pull useful data out of that torrent of information- such as how to differentiate between ‘tackle’ a problem, and fishing ‘tackle’. Definitely a page worth bookmarking!

Why is this interesting at all, you ask? Well, go do your normal Google search using just one or two keywords. Normally you’ll get 60 bazillion (yes, that’s a word, it’s scientifically proven) hits and if you’re lucky somewhere on the first two pages what you were looking for will appear- or at least something close to it. Use some of these ngrams to tell Google what you actually are looking for, et voilà!, a much more focused and narrow result . Too cool.

Ngrams FTW!

via Eugene Volokh