Google secrets

Extended Googling

Google offers several services that give you a head start in focusing your search. Google Groups
(http://groups.google.com)
indexes literally millions of messages from decades of discussion on Usenet. Google even helps
you with your shopping via two tools:

Froogle CODE
(http://froogle.google.com),
which indexes products from online stores, and Google

Catalogs CODE
(http://catalogs.google.com),
which features products from more 6,000 paper catalogs in a searchable index. And this only
scratches the surface. You can get a complete list of Google's tools and services at
www.google.com/options/index.html
You're probably used to using Google in your browser. But have you ever thought of using Google
outside your browser?

Google Alert
(www.googlealert.com)
monitors your search terms and e-mails you information about new additions to Google's Web
index. (Google Alert is not affiliated with Google; it uses Google's Web services API to perform its
searches.) If you're more interested in news stories than general Web content, check out the beta
version of Google News Alerts
(www.google.com/newsalerts).
This service (which is affiliated with Google) will monitor up to 50 news queries per e-mail address
and send you information about news stories that match your query. (Hint: Use the intitle: and
source: syntax elements with Google News to limit the number of alerts you get.)
Google on the telephone? Yup. This service is brought to you by the folks at Google Labs
(http://labs.google.com),
a place for experimental Google ideas and features (which may come and go, so what's there at
this writing might not be there when you decide to check it out). With Google Voice Search
(http://labs1.google.com/gvs.html),
you dial the Voice Search phone number, speak your keywords, and then click on the indicated link.
Every time you say a new search term, the results page will refresh with your new query (you must
have JavaScript enabled for this to work). Remember, this service is still in an experimental phase,
so don't expect 100 percent success.
In 2002, Google released the Google API (application programming interface), a way for
programmers to access Google's search engine results without violating the Google Terms of
Service. A lot of people have created useful (and occasionally not-so-useful but interesting)
applications not available from Google itself, such as Google Alert. For many applications, you'll
need an API key, which is available free from

CODE
www.google.com/apis
. See the figures for two more examples, and visit
www.pcmag.com/solutions
for more.
Thanks to its many different search properties, Google goes far beyond a regular search engine.
Give the tricks in this article a try. You'll be amazed at how many different ways Google can
improve your Internet searching.
Online Extra: More Google Tips
Here are a few more clever ways to tweak your Google searches.
Search Within a Timeframe
Daterange: (start dateûend date). You can restrict your searches to pages that were indexed within
a certain time period. Daterange: searches by when Google indexed a page, not when the page
itself was created. This operator can help you ensure that results will have fresh content (by using
recent dates), or you can use it to avoid a topic's current-news blizzard and concentrate only on
older results. Daterange: is actually more useful if you go elsewhere to take advantage of it,
because daterange: requires Julian dates, not standard Gregorian dates. You can find converters
on the Web (such as
CODE
http://aa.usno.navy.mil/data/docs/JulianDate.html
excl.gif No Active Links, Read the Rules - Edit by Ninja excl.gif
), but an easier way is to do a Google daterange: search by filling in a form at
www.researchbuzz.com/toolbox/goofresh.shtml or www.faganfinder.com/engines/google.shtml
. If one special syntax element is good, two must be better, right? Sometimes. Though some
operators can't be mixed (you can't use the link: operator with anything else) many can be, quickly
narrowing your results to a less overwhelming number.
More Google API Applications
Staggernation.com offers three tools based on the Google API. The Google API Web Search by Host
(GAWSH) lists the Web hosts of the results for a given query
(www.staggernation.com/gawsh/).
When you click on the triangle next to each host, you get a list of results for that host. The Google
API Relation Browsing Outliner (GARBO) is a little more complicated: You enter a URL and choose
whether you want pages that related to the URL or linked to the URL
(www.staggernation.com/garbo/).
Click on the triangle next to an URL to get a list of pages linked or related to that particular URL.
CapeMail is an e-mail search application that allows you to send an e-mail to google@capeclear.com with the text of your query in the subject line and get the first ten results for
that query back. Maybe it's not something you'd do every day, but if your cell phone does e-mail
and doesn't do Web browsing, this is a very handy address to know.