I believe in some circles it is referred to as google-fu/searchfu but I do not.
http://www.google.com/help/operators.html is a list of things that are useful.
http://www.google.com/support/bin/static.p...ml&ctx=advanced
The index of part relies on the fact most webservers allow directories to be indexed as standard (although a lot are blocked off these days and you will often get 403ed).
Also typing ../ at the end of an address bar will take you up a level, for example
Address:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/odds/bofh/
add ../ to the end to get
http://www.theregister.co.uk/odds/bofh/../ and hit enter/go
You will then appear at
http://www.theregister.co.uk/odds/
Fairly obvious for that site but some others can get some interesting stuff come up from it.
Anyhow the main searching stuff methods I use are:
site:[something]
I personally use "site:.ac.uk OR site:.edu" (no quotes) to only bring up results for sites with the TLD of .ac.uk or .edu
This allows you to to only get info from university sites. I know not all of them use such an address but it helps to weed out the useless sites and wikipedia/sites copying wikipedia
You can also add site:gbatemp.net to only bring results from gbatemp.net, useful if forums allow it as it can help with their search restrictions (low characters-one every 60 seconds.......)
Similarly you can add -site:[something] to whatever (in my case normally -site:wikipedia.org although I tend to run up against the myriad sites that wikipedia is great and copy it)
Finally if looking for older versions of software I tend to find various foreign sites mirror rather than direct their users to an English site. The page is promptly forgotten, indexed and then I appear wanting the file. In short it pays to learn download in several languages (if only because most people sending C&D notices/trying to find places to send to can just about do English). I suggest going to
http://www.oldversion.com/ first as it has loads but it is still worth knowing.
link:gbatemp.net
Searches for sites that link to gbatemp, not quite as useful as some features but can be helpful finding related sites.
You have the basic operators too which I suggest you learn.
"some phrase"
Quoting stuff means you get that exact phrase in a search rather than the words in any order. It also dodges the common word filter which search engines apply and that can mess up a search.
- gets rid of stuff (probably evident from above but who cares)
for example say I wished to know something about sabbath but not the band I would type in sabbath -band
OR (in capitals)
most searches require all the terms to appear to get results, OR makes any of the results turn up (very useful on occasion)
AND is default these days so you should not need it. It acts a bit like the quotes above but does not require exact phrasing.
I will take the lazy route here and say go to
http://www.google.com/help/operators.html
for the allintitle: intitle: allinurl: inurl: operators. Note that the index of trick tends to work better if you use allintitle:
It also pays to add a file extension to a search. For example go search for GABsharky (a GBA cheating tool whose site is long gone and not terribly well mirrored: there was a whole virus thing). Not so easy
GABsharky zip
Oh look first result is good.
The biggest tip of all: multiple search and do not be afraid of false positives. Too many people do not do this and are afraid of losing their a good result favouring instead to wade through a sea of junk.
For example if I was feeling especially vain I could search for my username.
First three results are my 4shared site, the US EZFlash forums and here. I know I have been here and the other places so I do not care to know about that.
FAST6191 -site:4shared.com -site:sosuke.com -site:gbatemp.net
Now some more interesting results, mainly quotes from me or stuff I have mirrored or released but despite my not having an account at gbx.ru (a pretty good Russian language site much like this site) I now know someone spoke of my kludgy hack of batchDPG there:
http://gbx.ru/index.php?showtopic=15672&st=80
Such searches also are pretty good at dragging up mirror/indexing sites to get around blocking filters, I also do this for new members (and their avatars: even if they do not have the name the often use the same avatar/signature) to try to form a quick opinion.
Hope I have helped a bit.