Some notes I found scribbled in his cage:
1. Never use the onsite search function. It's broken, undocumented, limited. Use google or ddg with 'site:...'
2. Learn all the search operators like intitle, inurl, etc.
3. Try different search engines. Sometimes one engine happens not to have indexed what you're looking for yet
4. Search for the text in UI elements of websites. E.g if you'm looking for a movie made in a particular year, go to IMDB and look at the part of a movie page that says the year, then search for that particular string like this: 'site:imdb.com "Made in: 1996"' you can turn almost any recurring element of a website into a tag this way.
5. Most of the above tips work best if you have a specific site to search use 'site:...' So, divide and conquer. Find the site(s) that will probably contain what you want and only then search for the thing.
> That hamster really learned how to use a search engine.
And allmighty help you if there is a product or popular media figure with the keyword you are searching. The search results will be flooded with links to some Marvel character that happens to share a name with the *nix daemon whose error messages you are searching.
Google seems to ignore these 90% of the time I try them. I have better luck with site:, but inurl is pretty much useless these days
When I use a search engine, I know I am often choosing my search terms based on suppositions about how the search engine works, but if I'm honest, I really have no idea. It usually devolves to trial and error until I find results that are close to what I wanted.