Searching for eBooks with Google - A small tutorial

As you know Google.com is the most popular search engine in the world. Here are some tips to help you find eBooks with Google:

Find Apache's (default) Index page

Try this query:

+("index of") +("/eBooks"|"/book") +(chm|pdf|zip|rar) +apache

Find a particular eBook file

Try this query:

allinurl: +(rar|chm|zip|pdf|tgz) TheTitle

"Book" ext:chm chm

Example

"OReilly" ext:chm chm

others

"ebook" inurl:ftp intext:chm

index of /pub/* intext:chm

inurl:ebook.DDU | inurl:ebook.EEN | inurl:ebook.JGT | inurl:ebook.LiB | inurl:ebook.EAT

There's a few ways to differentiate from that to change the outcome in your favor as well. For example, you can take away the "inurl:" to get many hits on things like forum posts or BitTorrent links. (Helpful if you're looking for something rare.)

You can also add the file type you like (such as PDF, CHM, LIT, etc) to get a specialized search. Finally, don't forget to put () or else Google may get confused. When defining an OR statement, Google expects the () to surround it. For example, you could search for:

- (ebook.DDU | ebook.EEN | ebook.JGT | ebook.LiB | ebook.EAT )

or

- PDF (ebook.DDU | ebook.EEN | ebook.JGT | ebook.LiB | ebook.EAT )

or get fancy with

- (PDF | CHM | LIT | ZIP | RAR | ISO) (ebook.DDU | ebook.EEN | ebook.JGT | ebook.LiB | ebook.EAT)

You can also use "Parent Directory"+ in front of it but don't limit the search to Google, try several engines.