With all the tech writers and evangelists on Google+, it’s become something of a fount of information. However, because these streams of information come quite quickly in terms of Google+ updates, keeping track of it all can be a little overwhelming, even in this, the infant stage of Google’s social network platform. While you can search Google+ while logged into the service, is there another way to access all of this content without being forced to parse through these updates?
Thanks to a technique publicized by Bill Handy, there is. In his “How to Search Google Plus” post, Handy details the technique, which isn’t difficult at all, provided you have Google Chrome. The process involves adding a new search engine to the Google Chrome’s list, and entering the query in question in the applicable URL text box. The query in question is as follows:
{google:baseURL}search?q=site:plus.google.com inurl:posts/* %s
Handy even features a video showing how to execute this very simple adjustment to Google Chrome:
A quick tutorial on how to search google plus status updates.
For those of you who say Handy should just follow the sources of information he’s interested in finding, he has the following response:
I’ve never been a fan of following people. Instead I prefer to follow topics or key words. It provides a more holistic overview of the conversations which surround those topics. For example, if I follow a group of individuals who love social media I will likely think social media is always awesome (it isn’t). Following (searching) the words “social media” most often used will provide me a bit better understanding because it will bring forth differing points of view on the same topic.
With that, we have Handy’s nifty little query string, which produces results that look like the following:
Google+ Search” />As you can see, the appearance is very much that of a normal Google SERP, so there shouldn’t be much if any confusion when executing Handy’s query. In fact, the search string is the most important component, and because Handy shared his findings, users know have the capability to conduct keyword searches of Google+ content without having to sift through all kinds of different posts.