Site Specific Searching in Search Engines

I just taught this to my class this week and thought I would share with my devoted readers (who didn't pay for the class but we will deal with logistics later).  One way to search a specific Web site when using a search engine is to use the site: command.  For an example (I'll use Google as my search engine), if you know that you would like to search a specific Web site when using your favorite search engine, go to your search engine (Google) and type in:

site:mysite.com search terms

Note, there is no space between : and the site name but is a space between the .com and the search term.  So for this example, let's use:

site:geekyclown.com nintendo

The resulting hit list will just be results from geekyclown.com.

You also can do this and specify the top level domain (.com, .gov, .edu, etc.).  With tax season here, this is a good way of getting only .gov Web sites when trying to get answers to your questions.  You can do that by the same ideology:

site:top level domain search terms

Example:

site:.gov tax forms

This can save you time searching when you can plan what you are looking for in advance.  Happy searching!