Search ‘Hacks’ That Mean You Can Find The Fan Content You Are Looking For More Easily
When you have a specific interest that has been partially adopted by a wider audience, it can be both good and bad news. Good because it means that all of the stuff you like is also being appreciated by the masses, but the influx of poorly constructed half baked content can leave you wanting to tear your hair out.
This means when you are looking for things on the internet, you usually have to trawl through poorly thought out fan theories put forward by people who have, for instance, only watched the TV series or go past a dozen videos made by content vultures who have strung together 8 minutes of conjecture out of one sentence they saw on Reddit.
The way to bypass all of this is to search more specifically, so with that in mind, here are a few search hacks that might make finding what you’re looking for much easier.
Cut out what you don’t want
If you are searching on the internet, you are probably going to start with Google, so the first few hacks are Google-specific. You probably already know about using tabs (i.e. select images if you are looking for images, etc.) and putting search terms in quotes so Google only looks for words in the same order you put them in, so those won’t be covered here.
One that is particularly useful, however, is the use of the minus sign. By placing a minus sign in front of an unwanted element, Google will remove it from the search. So, for instance, you wanted content on Avatar, but not the James Cameron movie, you would search for ‘Avatar –Cameron’, and you’ll get what you want.
Be more specific
If you use terminology that is specific to exactly what you want when searching on Google it should cut out all of the material that deals with the subject more generally and is for more widespread consumption.
Another tactic is to bypass Google almost completely and use a more specific search engine that can help you find more niche results. For example, the electrical engineers who designed the tech we use every day don’t find their answers on Google but look on databases that have comprehensive lists of components and are superior to a simple digikey part search. If you were to follow this example for what you are looking for, you’ll sidestep all of the generic content on the first dozen pages of Google, helping you find what you really want.
Conclusion
Finding exactly what you are looking for is a frustrating business, often made worse by the amount of content that is not quite as relevant or in-depth as you’d like it to be. However, by cutting out the things you know you don’t want, and being more specific either in terminology or what you are actually using to search, the answers you are looking for should be a little easier to find.
Chicano | Fighting/Writing for Diversity | DM since 08 | Anime Lover | Site: https://www.thegeeklyfe.com | info@thegeeklyfe.com | http://twitch.tv/that_deangelo | https://linktr.ee/deangelomurillo
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