Last week, I showed you some new ways to use Google. I'm now going to explain in more detail ways in which you can search out specific files and start to discover lots of information hidden throughout the Internet.

You can use Google look for difficult filetypes. For example, sometimes you may want to search only for spreadsheets. Maybe you once saw a Power Point presentation but can no longer find it. Never fear! Google can help!

Search

Returns...

filetype:doc

Search Microsoft Word documents only.

Try this example: filetype:doc taxes kenya

filetype:xls

Search Microsoft Excel documents only.

Try this example: filetype:doc budget government

filetype:pdf

Search Adobe PDF documents only.

Try this example: filetype:pdf army

filetype:ppt

Search Microsoft Power Point documents only.

Try this example: filetype:ppt france university

You can also search only within designated domain types. In the United States, all accredited universities have websites that end in .edu. All official U.S. military websites end in .mil.

Countries have specific codes as well. Japan is .jp, Egypt is .eg, Germany is .de and the list goes on. (For a complete information on each country, have a look here.) Simply search on site:gov, site:mil, etc. to look within a particular domain type.

Now if you were to start combining some of your searches, you might start to uncover some very interesting information. You could try to find U.S. military budgets by searching on filetype:xls budget site:mil. How about filetype:xls phone number site:jp. Try it - see what you find!