Cover Your Bases

Try all possible combinations of your search keywords at once, and find related keywords with Google Sets.

Imagine you have a set of query words but are not sure that they're the right set; you certainly don't want to miss any results by picking the wrong combination of keywords, including or excluding the wrong word. But the thought of typing a dozen-plus permutations of keywords has your carpal tunnel flaring up in horror. With some existing tools, you can fine-tune your Google queries by playing with word setsleading you down paths you might not have discovered.

Search Grid (http://blog.outer-court.com/search-grid), by German programmer Philipp Lenssen, lets you explore a wide range of Google search results by automatically searching for multiple combinations of keywords you specify. This gives you a quick overview of paths you can follow for a given set of keywords. You might, for example, put catsup, mustard, and pickles on the x-axis and relish, onions, and tomatoes on the y-axis.

Note that you get nothing but the first result; this is not the tool to use if you want an in-depth search of each query. Instead, it's meant to give you a bird's-eye view of how the different combinations of search words impact the query.

There's also a version of Search Grid that's been integrated into a web tool called FindForward (http://www.findforward.com/?t=grid), which gives you screenshots of some Google search results. FindFoward requires less typing: enter two to five words for which you want to check possible permutations. You get a large grid of search results, with screenshots available for some of the pages

Note that this grid searches each of your keywords individually (one square for mustard, one for pickles, one for relish) and searches every possible combination of two words (pickles relish, pickles mustard, mustard relish, etc.), but it doesn't search for three- and four-word permutations. In other words, this tool doesn't find every last possible permutation of your search. Again, it's an overview that gives you an idea of how different word combinations can affect your search, and it is not meant to be exhaustive.

Buy why limit yourself to keyword sets that you can dream up? Google has its own tool in development to expand your keyword vocabulary based on a small set of words. Google Sets (http://labs.google.com/sets) allows you to enter several keywords and have Google predict similar keywords in a large or small set. For example, plug catsup, mustard, and pickles into the form and click Large Set. You should see a list of 25 or more words that run the condiment gamut from Lettuce to Black Olive