Quick Tips: for finding Affinity content with Google Search

[v_kyr]

Quick Tips: for finding Affinity content with Google Search

Search engines: It’s easy to underestimate the power of a simple Google search (and it’s apparent many people on online forums who don’t know how to make use of it).  It can save you a lot of time, because someone, somewhere, at some point has undoubtedly had the same question you have—all you need to do is find out where they asked it and what answers and problem solutions they got in response!

With a few helpful Google search engine tricks, searching the Affinity Forum via Google can be made much more effective.

The Common Search

In general, you should string search terms with a space together to start the context search. Thus, the input "Affinity forum gradient" or "Affinity forum macro" in the search window shows all found link entries on the screen which contain those terms. Quoting ("...") helps to search after more closely related search text here.

Extended or Exclusive Search

To make Google search more effective, you should use so-called operators. Here are some of them.

• A tilde (~) before a search term makes the term synonymous. So "Affinity ~forum" brings both the Affinity forum as well as hints for possible other related forums.
• With a minus sign (-) you can specifically exclude terms from the search. For example, the minus designer in "Affinity layer masks -designer" calls up a list of Affinity layer masks related entries without designer in the context.
• With a plus sign (+) you can instead specifically include terms to the search criterias.

Search in and for Websites

To specifically search a particular website/page, prefix your search term with a "site:URL" - where the URL is the web address of the site/page on which you read the info recently. For example, "site:affinity.forum.com macro recording" searches and calls for a list of threads which deal with macro recording on the Affinity forum.

• A minus sign in the "-site:URL" input behind the actual search terms excludes results from the named URL. So "Affinity video -site:youtube.com" will exclude all Youtube videos from the search.
• With "site:de" it will only search German websites with the extension .de; Of course, other endings like .org or .com etc. can also be used here.
• With "related:URL" you can find out if other websites have similar content.
• In order to browse only publications from a specific period, you must connect the adjacent years with three points: here "2014...2018" only lists publications between 2014 and 2018 in the results list. For example in order to find at affinity.forum.com current practical contributions to macro recording you would use "site:affinity.forum.com macro recording 2016...2018".
   

Some helpful browser shortcuts

To speed up the search in general, there are a few shortcuts available. For example, "Ctrl + F" will bring up a small search window at the bottom of the page that will help you to search the current page for terms. Ctrl + or - enlarges the view, zooms in or out. Ctrl + L moves the cursor back to the address bar so you can enter a new website or search term.
 

Calculations, units of measurement and currencies

The Google search engine can also calculate and convert. For those of you who struggle with mental arithmetic, just type the math questions directly into the Google search window using the +, -, * / symbols. This calls at the same time the calculator for further input of even more complicated tasks.

If you want to convert units of measure or currencies, you can also type these directly into the search window. Thus, the input "inches in millimeters" picks up a unit calculator, with "pounds in euros" you get the current price displayed as well as references to various currency converters.

[v_kyr]

Let's emphasize this here again ...

Search engines: It’s easy to underestimate the power of a simple Google search (and it’s apparent that there are many people on online forums who don’t know how to make use of it).  It can save you a lot of time, because someone, somewhere, at some point has undoubtedly had the same question you have—all you need to do is find out where they asked it and what answers and problem solutions they got in response!

[NCOLEAMY]

Thank you for these tips. They will help a bunch.