Sometimes you can use Google to find information stored in a certain website or app that you can’t by using the website or app itself. I call these hacks “Google Backdoors”.<\/p>\n
Here are five Google Backdoors I use regularly.<\/p>\n
#1. BUSINESS FINDER<\/strong><\/p>\n A new restaurant opened in my neighborhood. Its owner said they delivered via Swiggy<\/em>, one of the leading food delivery apps of India.<\/p>\n I opened up Swiggy on my smartphone, entered the restaurant’s name into the search box and tapped the enter key. The restaurant didn’t show up on the next screen. I mentioned this to the owner.<\/p>\n He averred that a few other customers had also mentioned the same problem. He then borrowed my phone and Googled the restaurant’s name. Voila, the Swiggy result came up right on top.<\/p>\n I tapped the link and half expected it to take me to Swiggy’s splash screen, from where I’d need to start again, and go round and round in circles.<\/p>\n Thankfully, that didn’t happen. Google had used Deep Linking technology to take me directly to the said restaurant’s page on the Swiggy<\/em> app.<\/p>\n This is a strange situation where an app creates and stores data but can’t discover that data by itself whereas Google can. I don’t know why this happens, from a technical point of view. If and when I find out, I’ll update this post with the reason.<\/p>\n In this example, I used this hack to discover a restaurant inside a food delivery app but I’m quite sure it will also work in a more generic context, such as to find the listing for any type of business (e.g. doctor, salon) inside the corresponding app.<\/p>\n #2. CONTENT SEARCH<\/strong><\/p>\n If you’re into content marketing, you’ve posted many articles and comments all over the web.<\/p>\n You also find frequent opportunities to repost your past content. But you’re hampered in that pursuit because you can’t find your own pre-existing content.<\/p>\n Wish @disqus<\/a> had a search feature \u00e0 la @getliner<\/a> . Over the years I've left 1350 comments on the world's most popular commenting platform. By now, it has become very painful and time consuming to browse through them manually to find reusable past comments.<\/p>\n — Ketharaman Swaminathan (@s_ketharaman) June 17, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n