In an interview that is part of the article, Alford told the New York Times, "“I’m not high-tech, but I’m like, ‘This isn’t that complicated. This is just some guy behind a computer...In these technical investigations, people think they are too good to do the stupid old-school stuff. But I’m like, ‘Well, that stuff still works.’ ”

In the article, Alford goes on to discuss some of the Advanced Search features, available to any Google searcher, that he used to locate clues to Ulbricht's real-life identity.

Still think you're searching as effectively as you could be?

The post Are You Searching the Internet as Effectively as You Think You Are? appeared first on Continuing Legal Education (MCLE) in California, MCLE Los Angeles, CLE Orange County, Irvine & San Francisco.

First, Bing and Yahoo no longer recognize the Boolean connector NOT to exclude terms from a search. To exclude a keyword, multiple keywords, or a phrase, you must type a minus sign immediately to the left of each term you want to exclude. For example, If you wanted to search for results that included President Barack Obama and Iraq but wanted to exclude results that included Angela Merkel, Germany, and Iran, you would enter your search into the Bing (or Yahoo) search box this way:

"Barack Obama" Iraq -"Angela Merkel" -Germany -Iran

Previously, you could use the minus sign in this way or preceed the terms you wanted to exclude with the Boolean connector NOT (in all caps). Bing and Yahoo no longer recognize the NOT Boolean connector.

Second, you can once again exclude results from a particular site (or multiple sites) from your Bing and Yahoo search results. For example, if you wanted to locate Web pages that included information about President Barack Obama and Iraq but did not want to see any results from the Web sites of The Washington Post or Newsweek, you would enter your search into the Bing (or Yahoo) search box this way:

"Barack Obama" Iraq -site:www.washingtonpost.com -site:www.newsweek.com

Owner's of the 13th edition of the new "The Cybersleuth's Guide to the Internet" (IFL Press, 2015) book should update these functions as discussed on pages 52 and 77, respectively. Owners of earlier editions may want to check the index to see where these concepts are discussed.

The post Yahoo! and Bing Make Changes to Their Exclusionary Search Connector appeared first on Continuing Legal Education (MCLE) in California, MCLE Los Angeles, CLE Orange County, Irvine & San Francisco.

Previously, USA.gov's Advanced Search page provided a "fill-in-the-box"-type interface (similar to Google's Advanced Search page) that allowed you to create sophisticated, targeted searches through the USA.gov index.

You can still perform more precise advanced-type searches at USA.gov if you use specific search syntax to give USA.gov instructions on how to target your search. For more tips on searching USA.gov/Bing, see this post.

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Now, you can retrieve older tweets more easily, within a range you define, using the newly added "Dates" limiter on Twitter's Advanced Search page.

Simply add a beginning and ending date to the "Dates" limiter to define your date range.

You can also "mix and match" the search criteria on the Advanced Search page to create more targeted searches. For example, you could search for tweets "From these accounts" (searching by username), with "Any of these [key]words," and limit the date range during which the tweets were posted.

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 This link is no longer displayed.  There also does not appear to be a direct URL available to access the Advanced Search page.

Although the Advanced Search page is no longer available, you can still conduct advanced searches at Bing by entering advanced search operators and instructions (such as filetype) directly into the search box.

See our "Search Engine Features Compared" chart to learn about some of the more popular advanced operators and instructions that Bing recognizes.

The post Bing Changes Web Search Interface | Completely Removes Advanced Search Option appeared first on Continuing Legal Education (MCLE) in California, MCLE Los Angeles, CLE Orange County, Irvine & San Francisco.

To search for multiple phrases using the Advanced Search form you must enclose each of the phrases in its own set of quotation marks. Previously, anything entered into this box was treated as a single phrase, even if individual phrases were enclosed in their own quotation marks. To search for a single phrase using this form you do not need to use phrase without quotation marks at all - the form essentially does it for you.

This feature works on both Google Web Search and Google Scholar but not Google Groups.

Users could always search for multiple phrases on the homepage search box of any Google search service by enclosing each of the phrases in its own set of quotation marks. This functionality remains unchanged.

The post Google Updates Advanced Search, Now Recognizes Multiple Phrases From Search Form appeared first on Continuing Legal Education (MCLE) in California, MCLE Los Angeles, CLE Orange County, Irvine & San Francisco.

When the new design was announced at the beginning of December, it was, reportedly, supposed to roll out to all users within a week. Nearly two weeks later most users are still not seeing it. We were able to get access to the new design. Here's a preview...and some of it's not pretty.

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The Advanced Search Is Hidden Again

The June 2011 moved the link to Google's Advanced Search page off of the homepage and hid it behind the gear icon in the upper right-hand corner. Now it's gone from there too. Now, access the Advanced Search page isn't offered until AFTER you've run a search. (Click the gear icon and then Advanced Search from the drop-down menu or the Advanced Search link at the bottom of the search results list.)

You can still access the Web Search's Advanced Search page directly at https://www.google.com/advanced_search. One of the useful filters that disappeared in the June 2011 redesign of the Web Search Advanced Search page, like the Page-specific tools: Find pages that link to the page: have returned (as have the three OR Boolean connector search boxes).

What's on the Drop-Down Menu...and What's Not

The only "general" background or investigative-search-related search options on the first screen of the drop-down menu are Search, Images, and News. Other options are Maps, You Tube, Gmail, and Documents. 

Clicking on the More link at the bottom of the list open a fly-out list that includes Books and Finance, in addition to services like Blogger, Calendar, Translate, and Music.

Of course there's an Even more link at the bottom of this fly-out list. Clicking it displays an Everything Google page that includes the What do You Love Google search box, as well as links to (presumably) Everything Google.

This drop-down menu is available by clicking the Google logo on the homepage of any of the Google services that have been redesigned (currently this includes just about all of the services with the exception of Groups), as well as the Google bar.

Changes to the Search Filters

Ever since Google first introduced the three column layout they've been adding and deleting filters from the left-hand side bar that's displayed after you run a search. For example, they have recently added Flights, Patents, and Recipes to the list; renamed Groups to Discussions; and deleted the Timeline display mode. (Note that Groups still retains its old name on the Everything Google page discussed above.)

Portions of this post adapted from:

"Google For Lawyers: Essential Search Tips and Productivity Tools" is a hands-on guide to the Google tools, tips, and tricks that can help you work smarter...not harder.

The post Google Redesigns Home Page Again, Hides Advanced Search Page Further appeared first on Continuing Legal Education (MCLE) in California, MCLE Los Angeles, CLE Orange County, Irvine & San Francisco.

Google has redesigned its Web Search Advanced Search page. The new design undoes a change made in a previous redesign, makes some features more prominent, and removes (another) useful search filter from the page.

The first noticeable difference to the Advanced Search page is the addition of a "To do this in the search box" tutorial on the right-hand side of the page. This column shows you how to invoke the same search instructions form the Google homepage. For example, the tutorial to the right of the Find pages with...any of the words box, is  instructs you to Type OR between all the words you want: miniature OR standard - showing the OR Boolean connector capitalized as it must be.

The second noticeable difference is the return of a single box for the Find pages with...any of the words filter. Now, any words entered into this box will be included in your search and automatically separated by the Boolean connector OR. In the last redesign of the Advanced Search page, Google reduced this option to three boxes - limiting you to only three keywords separated by OR.

Next, Google has liberated a number of useful filters form behind the Dates usage rights, numeric range, and more link at the bottom of the page (see below). Previously you had to click that vaguely descriptive link to access those filters. These are now displayed automatically (see above).

Unfortunately, one of those and more filters that used to be hidden behind that link is now gone from the Advanced Search page completely. The Find pages that link to the page filter has disappeared. You can still instruct Google to filter for this result by typing the link:www.domainorpageyoureinterestedin.com instruction into the search box on the homepage. The Find pages similar to the page filter has also been removed (see below).

Portions of this post adapted from:

"Google For Lawyers: Essential Search Tips and Productivity Tools" is a hands-on guide to the Google tools, tips, and tricks that can help you work smarter...not harder.

The post Google Redesigns Web Search Advanced Search Page appeared first on Continuing Legal Education (MCLE) in California, MCLE Los Angeles, CLE Orange County, Irvine & San Francisco.

Google has changed the way users access the Advanced Search options for its News database. The Advanced Search options are now accessed via a drop-down arrow on the right hand side of the Google News search box.

Previously, the Advanced Search page was accessed via an "Advanced news search" link located to the right of the search box. Additionally, the URL for the previous Advanced Search page (https://news.google.com/advanced_news_search) leads only to a 404 error page.

The new drop-down does retain all of the features and search-limiters that were previously available on the original version of the News Advanced Search page. This Summer, Google also moved the location of the Advanced Search page for it's Google.com Web Search page.

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