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Thursday, May 6, 2010

A computer interlude: how to search TECHknitting blog (or any other website)

TECHknitting is currently running a poll (with prizes!!) asking you, dear readers, to say what posts and subjects you might like to see in the future.

One comment coming through loud and clear is a measure of frustration at searching for posts on specific subjects.

There are several ways to search TECHknitting blog. One way is to make use of the several indexes in the right column ---->

However, there is a faster, easier way to search this, or any other blog or website: you can harness the power of the Google search engine to do the heavy lifting for you. Here's how in 5 easy steps.


1. (above) Go to the Google home page and enter the term you want to search. In this case, I've entered "TECHknitting," but this will work with any other website also. Click where it says "search."

2. (above) After you've gotten your search result, you will notice a little link which says "more results from blogspot.com." Click that link.


3. (above) when you click the "more results" link, the window will change and the Google search engine will fill in the search window for you with a "site:" prefix, followed by the site name, as shown.


4. (above) Add the text you want to search the site for. In this case, the search term entered is "stripes." As you will note, there was a colon typed before the search term. However, this is punctiliousness: it works equally well without typing the colon. After adding the search term, click "search" and Google will search the site (and only the site) for the term you've specified.

5. (above) After clicking, Google will open a new window filled with the search results. Every post on the searched site will show. In this example, all posts on TECHknitting blog about stripes have been found. You can now scroll and click to your final destination.

Admittedly, this is a blunt instrument for finding content on a particular site. However crude is is, though, it goes so fast that you can do a dozen site searches in the time it takes to scroll though a conventional index.

--TK