Google Hacks is an open source program that can find all sorts of files, including MP3’s, Videos, and ebooks using Google. It will construct and execute searches in Google that make it much more likely to find what you are looking for in freely accessible directories all around the web.
It also offers a number of other Google related tools, such as backlinks searching and results that are related to your query.
We all know that Google packs some extremely powerful search technology, so it will probably come as no surprise to most people that, in fact, it is possible to use Google to find all sorts of media and other files (including MP3s) that are scattered across the web.
It turns out that there are virtual treasure troves of files in so-called unprotected web directories (you’ve encountered these, they look like a bunch of links with “Index of …..” on top).
All you need to do is know which modifiers to use in your web search to get to these. I am not really an expert on using/hacking Google, but if you want to know more about this you can check out this posting on the Googletutor website.
Alternately, you can use this program to do your searches, and it will search Google for you and customize your search in order to find the kind of file you’re looking for. Here are some notes on this program:
- You can search for music, books, videos, and products keys. You can even specify the desired format (e.g. mp3, wma, or ogg for audio; mp3, avi, and other for video, etc.)
- Google Hacks also includes a number of other Google related tools: e.g.: backlinks search, related searches, timeline search (generates a search trend of sorts across different years), indexing search (to see how well Google is indexing your site), and a map view search (it rather eludes me what this is).
- Installable and non installable (portable) versions available.
The verdict: my experience with Google Hacks is, simply put, that it works very well for MP3s and audio files but not well for anything else. Actually I feel like I should really emphasize how surprisingly effective it is in finding mp3s. Of course, the lesser the song or artist is known the less likely you are to find them, but I’ve been pleasantly surprised with what it was actually able to find.
As for other files (videos and ebooks) … it did not work too well and navigating/looking into directories was somewhat of a hassle that usually didn’t pay off.
I recommend you check this out. If you do not think it’s worth installing a program just to perform the occasional mp3 Google search you can always play around with the no-install version.
Version tested: 1.3
Compatibility: Windows, Linux.
Go to the download page to get the latest version (approx 692K).
