Searching within Google+

Search is pretty central to a lot of what Google does, so it’s no surprise to learn that there are a couple of neat tricks that combine Google’s search technology with Google+.

You can search the Google+ website in Google Search by entering your search term and then site:plus.google.com. This limits the search to just the Google+ website. The site: term can also be used to search any single website.

If you want to frequently search in Google+, you can set up Google Chrome (but no other web browser) with custom search terms. Two good ones to use are posts and profiles, which search through Google+ posts and profiles accordingly. Follow these steps to set up these custom Google+ searches in Google Chrome:

1. In Google Chrome, click the wrench icon and choose Options.

2. Click Basics and Manage search engines.

3. In the Add a new search engine text box, type Google+ posts.

4. In the Keyword text box, type posts.

5. In the URL With %s in place of query text box, type {google:baseURL}search?q=site:plus.google.com inurl:posts/* %s.

6. If you’ve entered the terms correctly, the new search term is added to the list of Other search engines.

7. You need to repeat the process for the profiles search. In the Add a new search engine text box, type Google+ profiles.

8. In the Keyword text box, type profiles.

9. In the URL with %s in place of query text box, type {google:baseURL} search?q=%s&tbs=prfl:e. The screen should look like Figure 14-8.

Now when you want to search Google posts, type the term posts followed by the search term in the Google Chrome search bar. A blue search icon appears to signify that you are performing a custom search. You use the second search term (for profiles) in the same way: by starting any search with the word profiles.