I've noticed, simply typing "abandoned ____" into Google doesn't do much for me. I was wondering of anyone had any key words that would aid in discovery.

Try old or closed. You'll run these dry pretty quick so you're gonna have to start researching various industries to get the good spots. Find the history of mental health in your state or paper companies that are going out. It gets very complicated but you figure it out.

vacant, shuttered

Disused, derelict, 'x' closure, 'x' redevelopment etc.

I'm not sure whether there will be a similar thing in the States but here in the UK there is a website database of all current projects being put out to tender by companies, and you can search by key word - by using the word demolition in the search form I've found a whole load of stuff which has been closed down and the demolition contracts haven't been awarded yet.

“Bando _______”

Abandoned or closed-down usually do the trick if there's anything big in the area. Google maps scrolling can be your best friend too though; look for worn-looking rooftops or try searching "permanently closed". Found a lot of great places like that over the years.

Shuttered, closed, laid off, shutting down operations, bought out, mothballed, vacant.

Also company names, like Archelor-Mittal if you wanna find a recently shut down steel mill, or Lefarge for cement plants, or HCA healthcare for hospitals

Closed, Shut down, vacant, defunct, old.
These have all helped me out. Good Luck!

Superfund sites

Try a news search for "demolition" and the area you live in.

Google offers two distinct features for searches that I use often. One is more widely known and probably easier to set up, which is Google alerts.

I use the Google alerts feature often and recommend checking it out. You can customize as many alerts as you can think of (well, I haven’t hit a limit yet anyway and I have dozens) and schedule an email with your alert notifications. I have all mine sent to my email once a week but you can instruct Google to send them as they happen as well. You can also drill down on some searches with Boolean (google’s version of it, anyway) searches. I’ve found useful searches mostly by trial and error.
Here’s a screenshot of some of my alerts I’ve set up:


The other Google feature for customized searches has a lot of potential but I haven’t played with it enough to enjoy all that it has to offer.
1. go to:
www.cse.Google.com

2. Sign in to your account

3. Create and save your customized searches!

This option is good for doing narrowed down searches more easily. I have saved searches specific to UE scouting, my photography, self searches, or whatever you can think of.


Lastly, I suggest reading up on how to do advanced Google searches, because at the end of the day, that’s all these two features are really doing. They have useful UI’s and features added to an advanced search so you don’t have to do it all yourself.
You can search for map files, specific sites, only government sites, etc, etc. the only limit is your imagination if you do it right.

Posted by notloganparker Abandoned or closed-down usually do the trick if there's anything big in the area. Google maps scrolling can be your best friend too though; look for worn-looking rooftops or try searching "permanently closed". Found a lot of great places like that over the years.

This sometimes works within the Google maps app as well. I’ve also found that typing in “abandoned” and “mines” can also be useful within the Google maps app. Google tends to sneak in small easy-to-miss features (and to sometimes take features away) with their updates and as the program continues to evolve.

Anywhere urban, the city is gonna publish a list of abandoned properties. You can look for things like public nuisance or abatement, etc. in rural areas I’d look for things like haunted, statist, hellhole, common terms like that. Most towns have some kind of feature like that.

Posted by Natchraz Superfund sites

I second this one. The Fed has a nice convenient database of every chemically contaminated site that they know. A lot of them are dead ends, but some are worth investigating.
Another option is check your state tax records, some record vacant land. A good indicator is land owned by any sort of environmental protection agency.

When searching with Google (not sure about other search engines), try searching: "inurl:_______" (fill in the blank [without quotes] with whatever word or phrase might provide interesting results). No spaces before or after the colon. This will significantly narrow the focus of your search and force Google to only include results that include your key word in the actual website address (url).

One of my favorites for an example:

"inurl:map abandoned" (without quotes)
This one will only provide, you guessed it, maps! You can include the search term "abandoned" or whatever you want to and the search will work just like normal except only results with "map" in the web address are included. "KML" is another one that can provide some interesting map results.

There are tons of similar ways to drill down on a search, but this is one of my favorites.

Bonus: try using the inurl: search with .gov, .edu, etc.

Less convenient for "fishing expeditions", but parcel ownership can tell you lots about a site - Search for "GIS <name of town>". Presumably you could write a script to find parcels in weird locations owned by town/state/corporations, e.g. a parcel spanning a river might have a dam and mill/hydroelectric station on it.

Also conservation land listings can be interesting, sometimes conservation land abuts or contains a brownfield.

"Eyesore" does the trick sometimes. Usually articles about locations will mention that the locals don't want it there so you'll hear words like "nuisance" and "burden". Pairing those up with terms about its appearance can work well.

I always like to look for new words to develop my lexicon and in this way, I feel much better and free when I have to say a speech or something like that.

Posted by RebeccaKerr I personally like the idea of this thread because [bullshit bullshit]. I feel much better and free when I have to say a speech or something like that. [more bullshit and spam link]

I'd personally like it if spammers didn't create throwaway accounts just to copy-paste barely-coherent spam that's absolutely unrelated to UE or the discussion at hand... except for any particular keyword. Which in this case is... "Key word" itself.

Bye bye Becky! This forum and the community will "feel much better and free" without you in it.

Posted by RebeccaKerr Not worth quoting

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