Anyone got some hints - tips for searching on Google

for files/names etc - what's the best way

filetype:
You can delimit by the extension .doc, .xls, .pdf
It is one of the searches.

For names, I wouldn't necessarily use goodle. people.yahoo.com is a really nice search engine to find people.

Also zoominfo.com is a nice place to search for biographical information. Most of it is free.

If you're looking for a particular file, it is sometimes good to search indexes. You'd do a search like:

description size intitle:index-of last-modified "parent directory" -inurl:htm -inurl:html -inurl:php

you would add the actual file or search parameter to the end of this string. Something like +Jennifer-Lopez if you were looking for files/images related to Jennifer. You can find some wacky crap this way though, so be careful.