One of the apparent limitations of Windows Live Spaces is the difficulty of tracking down topics that I’ve written about in my blog. You know the sort of thing: I remember writing about the BBC’s series of The Apprentice, but I can’t for the life of me remember when… Using Google or Windows Live Search returns millions of results, so how to narrow it down?
Well, of course, it turns out that it’s relatively straightforward, if you know how.
Google does have a blog search, and using the Advanced settings, it’s possible to narrow down the search to just my blog entries. That screen will build the search query for you using Google’s query syntax. So, the Advanced settings screen builds the query: "apprentice" blogurl:gcoupe.spaces.live.com.
Windows Live Search has a similar capability, in fact their Advanced settings screen has more options to tune the search than Google does. Once again, using the Advanced Settings screen will build the query: apprentice site:gcoupe.spaces.live.com. You’ll notice that Microsoft’s query syntax is not the same as Google. Standards, doncha just love them? Rob has more about the Microsoft query syntax over at The Space Craft.
One interesting thing about searching for the word "apprentice" in my blog: Windows Live Search finds all three instances; Google only finds two…
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