Google Hacks: Amazon.co.uk: Tara Calishain: Books

Amazon.co.uk Review

Everyone loves Google, and it's the first place many people turn to locate information on the Internet. There's a big gap, though, between knowing that you can use Google to get advanced information on your blind date and having a handle on the considerable roster of fact-finding tools that the site makes available. Google Hacks reveals--and documents in considerable detail--a large collection of Google capabilities that many readers won't have even been aware of. Want to find the best price on a pair of leg warmers? Try the Froogle price-searcher that's hidden within the Google site. Interested in finding Weblog commentary about a particular subject? Tara Calishain and Rael Dornfest call your attention to the special Google syntaxes for that purpose. This book makes it clear that there's lots more to the Google site than typing in a few keywords and trusting the search engine to yield useful results.

If you're a programmer--or even just familiar with an HTML or a scripting language--Google opens up even further. A large part of Google Hacks concerns itself with the Google API (the collection of capabilities that Google exposes for use by software) and other programmers' resources. For example, the authors include a simple Perl application that queries the Google engine with terms specified by the user. They also document XooMLe, which delivers Google results in XML form. In brief, this is the best compendium of Google's lesser-known capabilities available anywhere, including the Google site itself.

Topics covered: how to get the most from the Google search engine by using its Web-accessible features (including product searches, image searches, news searches, and newsgroup searches) and the large collection of desktop-resident toolbars available, as well as its advanced search syntax. Other sections have to do with programming with the Google API and simple "scrapes" of results pages, while further coverage addresses how to get your Web page to feature prominently in Google keyword searches. --David Wall, Amazon.com --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Review

"All in all "Google Hacks" is a fun book to read through and to play with the examples to see what you get." Linux Magazine, September 2003 "In-dept details on getting the most from Google, including site optimisation and submission tips for Web developers." MacUser, December 12th 2003 --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful

Pretty good, but at it's best if you are a programmer 9 May 2003

By Jennifers Daddy TOP 1000 REVIEWER

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

I love Google, so it was a joy to find this. I was very sceptical about what I could benefit from a book about a search engine!

It tells you about things most people don't know Google can find, including Stocks & Shares, phone numbers (reverse lookup too) and a whole load of other interesting features. Unfortunately a lot of the features only seem to work for American details, so searching for a British phone number does not work, nor does the stocks & shares information search.

The section on the Google API is very interesting too. This is only of use to software developers and probably of no use at all to anyone else. It tells you the nitty gritty of how to start using the API and gives clear examples of the syntaxs required.

I have given this book 4 stars, which is a mixture of 5 stars for software developers and 3 stars for eveyone else. For the price though, it is a pretty good book!

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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful

Not a book's worth of stuff to write on this subject 25 Jan 2004

By JG STYLES

Format:Paperback

This book tries really hard, but sadly shows that there isn't a book's worth of material on this subject. I learned one or two things from the early sections, but the large amount of detail about the Google API serves to show that there is only so much you can do with an API which takes some keywords and returns a list of hits which you can then interrogate.
Towards the end of the book the examples show a certain desperation is setting in.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

Some really good tips - worth getting! 7 Sep 2003

By Tsuchan

A really good, bite-sized format, ideal for this subject.

Some of these tips are just good, common sense; some frivolous; some thought provoking; some useful checklists; some providing useful base code (mostly Perl) with hints for use and adaptation.