Search Australia Help

 
 

Search Australia Help

The following are the main features of Search Australia.

  • Search Australia only provides results for domains using .au plus a few other selected sites.
  • Search Australia removes dozens of directory sites.
  • Search Australia provides single letter access to a number of services I provide and the main search engines.
  • Keywords can be entered into Search Australia to go direct to the site.
  • Set Search Australia as your default home page.

Search Australia only includes .au domains

Search Australia has been set up to only include the domains ending in: com.au, net.au, gov.au, edu.au, org.au, id.au, asn.au and selected sites. Normally when you search using one of the major search engines you'll be provided results which often list large overseas sites before Australian sites. Search Australia thus prioritises Australian sites making it easier to use the services of Australian businesses and organisations.

Search Australia removes dozens of directory sites

When people search often the only results they now get are directories making it harder to find the actual size. Search Australia excludes dozens of directory sites.

Single letter access to search engines and the services I provide

One of the major concerns I had is because around 95% of Australians search using Google, that means Google is able to track the activities of most Australians. By providing the ability to quickly use Bing and Yahoo are well, those who are concerned about their privacy can quickly send a search request to an alternate search engine. The theory is spread your searches across multiple search providers and a single search provider only then sees a smaller subset of your searches making it harder to profile you.

You can enter any of the following letters and go direct to the search engine, or enter the letter, a space and then what you want to search for, and your criteria will be passed across to the search engine for you.

G - Google

B - Bing

Y - Yahoo

In addition, I provide clients with a number of services and these can be accessed using a single letter, or a single letter followed by a space and then the criteria. For example, the letter "j" followed by a space and then a postcode will go direct to the JustLocal postcode page. Entering the letter "w" followed by a space and then a word will go direct to Word Check. Word Check provides a method to see if you are using using the preferred Australian English spelling of a word and the ability to check the meaning of a word.

J - JustLocal

W- Word Check

Keywords - Go direct to a site using a keyword

As a result of reading an article on the top searched sites in Australia I realised that when people search for the most popular companies and brands they end up on a Google page showing search results whereas they could have easily been sent direct to the desired site saving time. In addition, often the business they are looking for is shown further down the page or on the next page, which can mislead people causing them to go to the wrong site.

Initially I started with the top 20 sites and then extended to the top couple of hundred sites people search for.If you're looking for a company which is a household name, chances are if you enter the commonly used name for the company you'll go direct to their site. For example type in ANZ and you'll go direct to the ANZ site.

By using keyword access you save a considerable amount of time. How much time you may ask. Below is a sample of the keywords you can use with Search Australia. These keywords according to Google are searched for around 70 million times a month. Many searches that could just as easily go direct to the website. With the entire list of keywords there would be over a billion searches locally in Australia a year using the keywords. The search for the term Facebook by itself would be close to 300 million times a year. Those searches end up displaying Google search results. Entering Facebook or FB into Search Australia and you go direct to Facebook. Next time you perform a search and end up with a list of Google search results, ask yourself if perhaps there is a better way.

Gumtree
Commonwealth bank
ANZ
Telstra
Seek
Jobs
Westpac
AFL
Virgin
National Australia Bank
ABC
Qantas
Optus
Ebay
Woolworths
Coles
Harvey Norman
Kmart
Target
Amazon
ASOS
Officeworks
Google
Facebook
Youtube
Yahoo
Wikipedia
Linkedin
News
Twitter
SMH
PayPal
NineMSN

Set Search Australia as your home page

Much to my surprise when I've been assisting clients supporting their computers and let them know an old trick I used which helps them identify if their computer has had their browser hijacked. Add Search Australia as their home page and if the page gets changed changes are their browser has been hijacked.

Handy keywords

If find the following keywords I've added to the main list to be very useful

Weather, BOM - for the Bureau of Meteorology site.
TV Guide - Freeview TV guide
TV 7, TV 9, TV 10, TV SBS - Catch-up TV sites for the main channels
W - To check the spelling of a word using Word Check. Type a space then a word to check the word.
J - JustLocal. A space then postcode to go to postcode page
ABN - Check an ABN using the ABR register
GMAIL SPAM - Report spam to Gmail
SPAM - Report spam to ACMA
WEBMASTER, WEBMASTERS - Google webmaster
WHOIS - AUS registry to check domain owner details
TRANSLATE - Google Translate
MAPZ - My site of maps I've created
SERP - Calculator to determine value of SEO
CPU - Site to check CPU speed
S - Search Australia
PETROL - My petrol prices Melbourne site
SPEED - Check the speed of your broadband using Netflix service
TIME - Time for a location using Google. Enter a space then location
C - Calories for a food item using Google. Enter a space then food item

Privacy

Please be aware that any search critera you enter into any search engine is recorded somewhere. Nothing is private online. In terms of the data entered into Search Australia your data will not be shared with others by Online Connections and will be treated with respect and appropriately confidentiality. The recent NSA Prism scandal shows us that many others may have access to our online data without our knowledge. Short of not using the internet that is outside our control.

Please enjoy Search Australia. I find Search Australia to be extremely useful and I use it many times a day. Even when I want to search using Google I use Search Australia and simply enter G before what I want to search for. I don't lose any of the functionality of the search engines and I gain direct access to many of the sites I use every day. I hope you will find Search Australia justvas useful.

 

 
 
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