Recently found out about a Google feature that's apparently a few months old - Personalized Search Trends. If you search through Google and have an account with them they'll kindly record your search history. While there may be folks who don't want their search history examined, I find it an invaluable tool since it can easily be searched and scanned. That link I found the other day that I forgot to bookmark is a lot easier to dig back up thanks to the Personalized Search. Moreover, there is potential for Google to use your search history / click through information to better provide search results, and the ability to bookmark search results (although this feature still needs some work, IMO).
Since I use Google as my search engine of choice, the Trends information provides an interesting insight into my searching habits. For example, looking at the top sites that I click through it's pretty evident that I'm a Web developer working on Microsoft technologies:
Top sites
| 1. |
msdn.microsoft.com |
| 2. |
msdn2.microsoft.com |
| 3. |
aspnet.4guysfromrolla.com |
| 4. |
www.4guysfromrolla.com |
| 5. |
weblogs.asp.net |
| 6. |
scottonwriting.net |
| 7. |
en.wikipedia.org |
| 8. |
www.microsoft.com |
| 9. |
blogs.msdn.com |
| 10. |
www.w3schools.com |
The Trends report also breaks down the search activity by month, day, and hour, along with the most popular search terms for each unit of time. Since searching, for me, is typically work-related, the hour report shows that my most productive hours are between 8 AM and 3 PM. And for some odd reason I was up once at four in the morning searching on Google for conversions from miles to yards.
I've found the quickest way to search for online documentation on .NET issues is, when in FireFox, to do the following:
- Hit Ctrl+K (puts the cursor up in the “Quick Search“ box)
- Type in class name, method name, or property name to search on, along with “msdn2“
- Hit enter.
Very often the first result is the official docs on Microsoft's site. Quicker than opening or searching the offline docs, in my experiences. There's also a Google Microsoft search page, but the main Google search index works good enough for me.