Stupid Google Tricks
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by Particle Bored

Google.com has long been the undisputed king of search engines, yet few are
aware of its power as a hacking tool.  I have discovered a few features that
are sure to provide hours of fun for the whole family.

To waste a few seconds of your life you can change the language via the
Language Tools link on the main page.  It is possible to change the language of
the interface to anything from Bengali to Telugu, but I prefer Elmer Fudd.  Do
not attempt to use the Hacker language while under the influence of caffeine,
as you are likely to kick a hole in your monitor.

On of the features that gets me quite aroused is Google's ability to search
files with a specific DOS extenstion.  This is done by submitting a query in
the following format:

  search terms filetype:ext

where search terms are, uh, your search terms, and ext is a typical DOS file
extension.  Searches of xls and mdb files are great for finding things like
customer lists.  You can even search text within vbs and dll files.  As far as
I can tell there are no limits as to the file types, so there is plenty of room
for creativity.

I'm sure all of you have visited a worthless web site where you can't locate
information even if you use their search engine, like sun.com.  Well, let
Google search their site for you.  Using sun.com as an example, simply use the
format:
  
  search terms site:sun.com

and you will probably find what you seek.

Another cool feature is the ability to search for sites that link to a specific
site.  Not only can you use this to discover who is linking to your web site,
but it is good for quickly finding all of an international company's web sites.
For sun.com I would use the format:

  search terms link:sun.com

Use only the domain name or you will restrict the results.

As for restricting results, there are times you will need to search only the
title since searching all of the text yields far too many hits.  Searching
titles only can be done with this:

  allintitle: search terms

I'm not sure why they changed the syntax on this one.  Note the space after the
colon, too.

Google is great for working with phone numbers as well.  Searching on an area
code and prefix will quickly give you the location of an unknown target since
one of the hits is likely to contain an address.  But wait - Google can do
reverse lookups too!  Simply enter the area code and phone number (in dashed
format) as the query.

You may want to use this final trick quickly, since I fear the functionality
may disapper soon after this article is published.  Have you ever found the
perfect document, only to be denied access because of the .mil site where it
resides doesn't like your source IP?  If you look within the query results you
will hopefully find links that say "Cached" or "View as HTML".  Follow the link
and you will be able to view Google's copy of the document.