Why doesn't google.com have a comprehensive list of these? I'm constantly seeing new ones that I didn't know about, but google never teaches you about them so you have to find them in obscure blog posts
The range operator also works great with years, dates, though the Tools menu with shortcuts for before: and after: operators can help there too.
One I haven't seen mentioned yet but used to be documented is that you can leave out words in a phrase by replacing them with an asterisk. I'm having trouble not italicizing text in this comment box, so pretend \* means a single asterisk: "Stocks rose today by \* percent" as a search matches the phrase "stocks rose today, led by a 4.4 percent". (Which until this post, had only one result on Google.)
Note that it's not 100% exact matching, because for actually exact matches you have to select "Verbatim" under Tools > All Results in the menu below the search box on the results page.
The only downside to using all these operators is that you'll get very familiar and frustrated with the Google reCAPTCHA prompts as your search is "too precise to be human". Even when signed in to Google, especially often in Safari on an iPhone. Sigh.
Oddly, this results in a non-italicized asterisk in the output, contrary to reports in earlier comments that the resulting asterisk would be in italics. There is, however, a zero-length italicized string right before the asterisk in the HTML:
"Stocks rose today by <i></i>* percent".> "Stocks rose today by <i></i>* percent".
Sounds like the matching is something like
/\<\*.*\*/
/\<\*[^*]*\*/
/\<\*.+*/If there is such a page, can you give an example query that would trigger it?
My earlier query triggered it. Without a query, I can make the following text show up by going to https://www.google.com/sorry/index which when a relevant query is attached to the URL, it shows a reCAPTCHA for the search query, and also shows your IP address, etc.
> About this page
> Our systems have detected unusual traffic from your computer network. This page checks to see if it's really you sending the requests, and not a robot. Why did this happen?
If you click the link "Why did this happen?" it says:
> This page appears when Google automatically detects requests coming from your computer network which appear to be in violation of the Terms of Service[1]. The block will expire shortly after those requests stop. In the meantime, solving the above CAPTCHA will let you continue to use our services.
> This traffic may have been sent by malicious software, a browser plug-in, or a script that sends automated requests. If you share your network connection, ask your administrator for help — a different computer using the same IP address may be responsible. Learn more[2]
> Sometimes you may be asked to solve the CAPTCHA if you are using advanced terms that robots are known to use, or sending requests very quickly.
[1]: https://www.google.com/policies/terms/ [2]: https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/86640
The annoying part is that my account has never been whitelisted based on good behaviour. Instead, I end up seeing such reCAPTCHAs thousands of times a year, to the point where I stop counting them. Roughly half the time I'll answer the reCAPTCHA and the other half of the time, I'll close the tab and go do something else. Cloudflare site loading captchas are even worse, though. They delay the site by 5 seconds while they "check my browser", and then show an hCAPTCHA to solve, even when I'm already signed in with the first-party site. Very annoying, though the captcha is often easier to solve than Google's. The Cloudflare block often on streaming media websites. Ironically, Cloudflare's captchas have never prevented me from using commonly available Python scripts to watch streaming flash videos in VLC, they only block my web browsing...
I can only assume that Safari's excellent ad blocking and tracking prevention is causing my browsing traffic to stand out compared to others', enough that it prompts these CAPTCHAs more frequently.
Related:examplesite.com used to work well. Now, it's better to use sites like alternativeto.net.
~phrase is unnecessary because but google searches for synonyms by default
phrase1 + phrase2 - Google randomly ignores it. I use it this way +compulsoryTerm
Although rare, there are things I simply can't find using Google. But Bing would. If Google keeps it up, other search engines would benefit.
Also interesting, related:bing.com gives me no results.
In the past for very long tail content, I've found Bing and Yandex to be useful. Yandex image search in particular is often better than Google or Bing, particularly if you are searching for people because it does some facial recognition.
Google would rather people are trained to just type human speak into the search box.
i highly doubt that's a concern. Google's competitive advantage will not be eroded if they did have operators clearly documented. Another search engine could not replicate google's index, even if they could replicate the operators.
And most people do want to just type human speak and have the machine magically interpret it correctly.
It is quite obvious that google does not give a s&it whether I find what I think I want to find. Google is much more interested in 1) serving me ads they think are most profitable and 2) giving me results they think I want.
The reality is that all sorts of things are blocked now, including things that are perfectly legal.
Ah, Google, always so reluctant to get rid of anything legacy because of their fanatical devotion to their existing user base.
The broader OSINT has used dorking for a decade plus (e.g. exploit-db.com goes back to 2003).
The goal in writing this was to democratize access beyond those who use it regularly for work