Over on the Digital Inspiration site, Amit Agarwal discovered some lesser-known features in Live Search that are unique to the search engine. These little gems are worth checking out - click here to review them in more detail on his site. The four tips he came across include:
- Watch Video Previews – right in the search results, you can click on the thumbnail to see a short preview of the video which you can watch without having to visit the video website
- Find Web Pages that Link to Docs, MP3s, Videos, etc. – This is different than the filetype: search operator which searches the text within that particular filetype. Using contains:doc, for example will search for all pages that link to a Word document. Combine with site: to find all pages from a particular website linking to a particular file type.
- Save Images As You Search – Live Image Search features a scratch pad that lets you drag and drop pics as you search.
- Subscribe to Search Results – By appending "&format=rss" (sans quotes) to the end of search query, you can subscribe to any search result via RSS. (Oh yeah, I discovered that earlier this year, too). You don’t even have to append text if your browsers identifies RSS feeds on its own - it will display the RSS icon in the address bar for you to subscribe to.
Out of all these tips, it’s that last one that has the most relevance for me. As an RSS addict…err…user, being able to quickly and easily get feeds for search results is something that other search engines don’t provide for universal search results. Instead, RSS feeds elsewhere are isolated to specific verticals like news search or blog search. When you want a universal search feed, Live Search can be a useful tool.