You Can Do What with Google?

The answer is many things. Sadly, some of those things are not good, or legal. Since its inception Google has become a powerhouse of the web. Many online sessions start with Google. It's "crawlers" search the web, find a website, and go through it directory by directory, file by file, and then indexing the site as it sees fit. Of course how those sites are ranked and indexed is Google's trade secret. Something search engines call their algorithm. The algorithm is simply the formula that is used to determine where a website will show up when someone punches in a search.

That being said, it is not hard to imagine why Google can be a powerful tool for all the right, and wrong, reasons. There are many tips and methods you can use when searching with Google that will help you generate more accurate and/or relevant findings. One very basic trick is to put quotes around a specific word or phrase that you want to find. This can be very useful. For example, if you want to search for news articles on Barack Obama, if you type in the search bar:

news articles Barack Obama

That might find you some of what you are looking for but you will also turn up results somewhere along the line that have other people with the last name Obama, say Timothy Obama, or Jessica Obama, you get the idea. By putting the name in quotes like this:

news articles "Barack Obama"

That will bring up search results that have that exact phrase in it, Barack Obama. Something like this is very basic but can be very useful, Google does not keep these types of search methods a secret, they want you to be able to maximize their search engine too. They have a separate page that lists all the different methods of narrowing your searches on their website and it can be found here. That will bring you to their section on basic search essentials; it also has an advanced section which covers more complex search methods.

Did you know that you can find all kinds of things with Google? Many so called "hackers", which usually means a 13 year old kid sitting at his computer, use Google to find passwords, credit card info, e-mail addresses, subscription information, and sensitive documents. There are a host of websites that cater to these tactics, sites like Johnny I-Hack-Stuff. They have even coined an affectionate name for the people who leave this type of information for Google surfers to find, they call them "Google Dorks".

On the site I mentioned there is an entire Google hacking database which outlines various searches you can run. One method they exploit is to search for specific web pages that have common names for a bundle of merchant software. How does this happen? Well, it is pretty simple actually. Many people want to make money by selling products online. Everyone wants to be an online millionaire. New webmasters will purchase shopping cart software and install it on their host, punch all their products in and start selling and advertising their website. Well, any online web store has a page, database, or text file of sensitive order information. This can be anything from names and addresses to credit card numbers that are not even protected. Now a high quality software company will make sure that when you install their product on your web host that these types of files are not accessible. Inevitably, there will always be those select bunches of websites that do not setup proper security on these files, and then Google's spiders will come and index them, making them available for the entire world to see.

Case Study

A while back when I first learned of these Google hacks I was fooling around to see if it was really possible to get things like passwords and such. Well, I found an excel file of a college student who was the leader of a certain fraternity, and in that file she listed the usernames and passwords to the fraternity website of each one of her sorority sisters. I did a minimal amount of investigating, found out the web address of the website, and I was able to log in as any one of the girls. Now there were all kinds of things I could have done on that site. Of course, me being a moral person, I left it alone and contacted the owner of the excel spreadsheet and explained to her what I was able to do. She was stunned that this file was immediately accessible to anyone who wanted to read it. She took the proper steps to remove the file from view and that was that.

Not everyone has a moral compass though. What many of these idiots will do is go in and screw up people's websites, steal credit card numbers, publish stolen passwords, you name it and they've done it.

All you have to do to see how popular these methods have become is do a search on Google for Google Hacks and you will see what I am talking about. From that point on you might want to check your own sites and files to see if any of yours are turning up on Google.

In every arena of life there will always be those who will lie, cheat and steal. That will never change, but the one weapon people like you and I have against people like this is information. With the advent of the web there is now no limit on the amount of information available on any one topic. My suggestion is that you go over these search methods and learn them so you can prevent your own stuff from getting ripped off, become an informed person.