Site-specific Search, one of the Most Powerful Google.com Features

Have you ever heard of site-specific search? Maybe you've used it before without knowing what it was.
It's simple, when you're searching Google for cats, and you want to limit your search to a specific site, simply add a "site:" parameter, making your Google search "cats site:youtube.com". What you'd doing, is telling Google to only return results on youtube.com that have to do with cats. If you need more examples on using this powerful feature, check out Google's Help resources.

What does knowing how to search on Google have to do with data visualization? Well, good information is the foundation of any data work you'll do.


We're living in a time where:

• More and more information is available online
• More and more crap is clogging search results
• Top notch websites still have terrible search functionality within their own domain

Ok, enough theory. How does this apply to me? Here are a few examples:

1. Weeding out crap

This morning I was helping my wife find an accounting software for Mac. She sells handmade chainmaille jewelry on Etsy (shameless plug).

Here are the results for "accounting software for mac" - ads, an outdated article from macworld.com, and affiliate sites. If this was the extent of my research I might conclude that Quickbooks and Quicken were my only two options.

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Instead of a general search, lets see what folks have to say on Etsy. Here are the results for

Google search: accounting software for mac site:etsy.com 

You'll notice that all the results are limited to etsy.com. The first result is a forum discussion where several Etsy sellers recommend Outright.com. Great advice from highly relevant folks.

2. Bypassing a sucky site navigation

Kudos to our government for trying to make public data available. But lets say I actually have a specific dataset I'd like to find, despite the designers best intensions, the site design isn't the most intuitive. After the Newtown shooting, I wanted to create a chart mapping mental health spending by state vs locations of shootings (I still may, if I can pull the data together). But where do I go?

Searching data.gov for:
"mental health spending by state" -> returns no results.
"mental health spending" by state -> no results
mental health spending by state -> Dropping the quotes brings up results, the first of which sends me to HealthData.gov. Unfortunately the site design here is even worse, but I find a "Data" tab. From there I search for "mental health spending by state" (all quotes), nothing. Then I search "metal health spending by state" (only mental health in quotes). This brings up several results.

One result looks promising "National Health Expenditures - State (Residence)", but clicking on it confirms that it was last updated in 2007. Dang.

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Lets try this problem with site-specific search. I've heard of data.gov, lets start there:

Google: "mental health" expenditures by state site:data.gov

(you'll notice that "mental health" is in quotes, this is an advanced trick which keeps the search phrase together instead of searching for any mention of "mental" and any mention of "health")

Ok, result #3 looks promising:

Interactive Datasets | Data.Gov | Open Federal Data

https://explore.data.gov/catalog/next-gen?federation_filter=84

Now, do a quick Ctrl+F for "mental health" and I find:
State-by-State Behavioral Health Resources Services mental health, substance abuse, advocacy, support

Provided by info.samhsa.gov

Well, it's not a breakdown of spending by state, and sometimes that's what you end up with government sources, but at least it has locations of facilities by state. So this could be a place to start.


I'd love to hear if this tutorial was helpful, or if you have any search tips or tricks.