October 2007 Archive

Link Searching at Live

Back in March, Live turned off access to link searching commands (link:, linkdomain: and inurl:) due to their abuse by automated data mining tools. Since Google limits the functionality of its link: search due to similar concerns, that left only Yahoo! with robust link searching commands. And while I hesitate to post this for fear of this trick being turned off, Karen Blakeman has posted a way to get all three to work again. Searchers just need to put a + in front of the command. It's a clever trick, and one that Karen told me has worked since June, at least. While Microsoft has said that they hope to bring the commands back in one form or another, this provides a way to use the commands now against their existing database. Enjoy it while it lasts!

Updated Cache Sources

A recent posting at ResourceShelf introduced two new sources of cached Web pages and reminded me to update my list of sources for archived/cached pages. I've added several other sources that I'd run across and not added to that page over the last few months, including Alexa, Healia, and WebCite, along with the ones mentioned by ResourceShelf: DiplomacyMonitor and ZoomInfo. I've moved IncyWincy to the former sources at the bottom, since I can no longer find cached links there. That makes at least 14 sources for finding copies of old pages.

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Flash SearchMash

A new Flash version of SearchMash was found by Google Operating System. I haven't seen many major changes in Google's experimental site, especially since the Google Universal Search launch back in May. The Flash version is a significant change. It includes includes options for tracking a search history (see the left side hidden panel for this and other options), results screen shots from Snap, and access to all the databases available from regular SearchMash. One additional database added to this Flash version is Maps.

Microsoft and Yahoo! Update Search

For an overview of some of the recent changes at Live Search and Yahoo!, see my Microsoft and Yahoo! Update Search Newsbreak article.