Find Directories of Information

Use Google to find directories, link lists, and other collections of information.

Sometimes you're more interested in large information collections than scouring for specific bits and bobs. You could always take a stroll through the Google Directory (http://directory.google.com) to see what's available, but sometimes a topic-specific directory is what you need.

Using Google, there are a couple of different ways to find directories, link lists, and other information collections from across the Web. The first uses Google's full-word wildcards and the intitle: syntax. The second is a judicious use of particular keywords.

Title Tags and Wildcards

Pick something you'd like to find collections of information about. We'll use "trees" as our example. The first thing we look for is any page with the words "directory" and "trees" in its title. In fact, we build in a little buffering for words that might appear between the two using a couple of full-word wildcards (* characters). The resultant query looks something like this:

intitle:"directory * * trees"

This query finds "directories of evergreen trees," "South African trees," and of course "directories containing simply trees."

What if you want to take things up a notch, taxonomically speaking, and find directories of botanical information? Use a combination of intitle: and keywords, like so:

botany intitle:"directory of"

and you get almost 10,000 results. Changing the tenor of the information might be a matter of restricting results to those coming from academic institutions. Appending an edu site specification brings you to:

botany intitle:"directory of" site:edu

This gets you around 150 results, a mixture of resource directories, and, unsurprisingly, directories of university professors.

Mixing these syntaxes works rather well when searching for something that might also be an offline print resource. For example:

cars intitle:"encyclopedia of"

This query pulls in results from Amazon.com and other sites that sell car encyclopedias. Filter out some of the more obvious book finds by tweaking the query slightly:

cars intitle:"encyclopedia of" -site:amazon.com
-inurl:book -inurl:products

The query specifies that search results should not come from Amazon.com and should not have the word "products" or "book" in the URL, which eliminates a fair amount of online stores. For some interesting finds, play with this query by changing the word "cars" to whatever you like.

If mixing syntaxes doesn't find the resources you want, there are some clever keyword combinations that might just do the trick.

Finding Searchable Subject Indexes with Google

There are a few major searchable subject indexes and myriad minor ones that deal with a particular topic or idea. You can find the smaller subject indexes by customizing a few generic searches. "what's new" "what's cool" directory, while gleaning a few false results, is a great way to find searchable subject indexes.

directory "gossamer threads" new is an interesting one. Gossamer Threads is the creator of a popular link directory program. This is a good way to find searchable subject indexes without too many false hits.

directory "what's new" categories cool doesn't work particularly well, because the word "directory" is not a very reliable search term, but you will pull in some things with this query that you might otherwise have missed.

Let's put a few of these into practice:

"what's new" "what's cool" directory phylum
"what's new" "what's cool" directory carburetor
"what's new" "what's cool" directory "investigative journalism"
"what's new" directory categories gardening
directory "gossamer threads" new sailboats
directory "what's new" categories cool "basset hounds"

The real trick is to use a more general word, but make it unique enough that it applies mostly to your topic and not to many other topics.

Take acupuncture, for instance. Start narrowing it down by topic. What kind of acupuncture? For people or animals? If for people, what kinds of conditions are being treated? If for animals, what kinds of animals? Maybe you should search for "cat acupuncture", or maybe you should search for acupuncture arthritis. If this first round doesn't narrow the search results enough, keep going. Are you looking for education or treatment? You can skew results one way or the other using the site: syntax. So maybe you want "cat acupuncture" site:com or arthritis acupuncture site:edu. By taking just a few steps to narrow things down, you can get a reasonable number of search results focused around your topic.