How do you search your blog posts for the one that contained a particular link, but in a context you can't quite remember?
John Tropea at LibraryClips posed me this question last week:
I come across this post < ahref="http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/01/10/searchfox-to-shut-down">http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/01/10/searchfox-to-shut-down and I know I have blogged about it before.How do I find my post that points to this URL?
JT tried a link search on Google blogsearch using the link: limit to pull out posts that link to the URL in question: link:http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/01/10/searchfox-to-shut-down but made the point that while this turned up the page he wanted, what would he do if the page returned 1000 hits or more... i.e. too many hits for it to be useful?
A more specific search, e.g. combining "library clips" with the link: limited query, either as keywords or as part of a title: limit (which searches for words in the title of the page) didn't work, and nor did a search containing the link limit with a site: limit, (which would force the SERP to return pages rooted on a particular domain).
(John also tried various other searches using Technorati, as well as his own site search - read about them in full in his original post.)
The answer is to look Beyond Google: the Altavista search engine does allow you to combine other limits with a site: limit, as this query demonstrates:
Search Altavista for: link:http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/01/10/searchfox-to-shut-down url:libraryclips.blogsome.com
More Altavista search limits.
Posted by ajh59 at August 13, 2006 10:28 PM