Amazon.co.uk Review
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 an alternate Paperback edition.
Review
Product Description
Whether you're a high school student looking for the latest info on your favorite rock group, or a seasoned attorney researching an old case, you're probably using Google. It seems like everyone is. And who can blame them? With access to more than three million documents in over 30 languages, Google is a researcher's dream. It's no wonder, then, that nearly 150 million Google searches are conducted each day. As a result, people are hungry to learn new ways to maximize its usefulness.
Truth is, there are dozens upon dozens of techniques to learn--each designed to make your Google search more time-efficient, more productive, and more fun. And Google Hacks, Second Edition has the inside scoop on them all.
An absolute must-have guide for anyone who searches the Internet--and these days that's just about everybody--Google Hacks, Second Edition takes its best-selling predecessor one step further. In plain language, Google Hacks, Second Edition is an updated collection of industrial-strength, real-world tested solutions to practical research problems.
Best of all, each of its 100 hacks are easy to read and digest--no confusing terminology or extraneous information to hamper your understanding. And although they can be read in just a few short minutes, when put to use, they can easily save you hours of research time. Now that's bang for your buck!
From the Publisher
About the Author
Excerpted from Google Hacks by Tara Calishain, Rael Dornfest. Copyright © 2003. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Google’s full-word wildcard stands in for any keyword in a query.
Some search engines support a technique called "stemming."Stemming is adding a wildcard character —usually *(asterisk)but sometimes ?(question mark)—to part of your query, requesting the search engine return variants of that query using the wildcard as a placeholder for the rest of the word at hand. For example,moon*would find:moons, moonlight,moonshot,etc.
Google doesn ’t support stemming.
Instead, Google offers the full-word wildcard. While you can ’t have a wildcard stand in for part of a word,you can insert a wildcard (Google’s wildcard character is *) into a phrase and have the wildcard act as a substitute for one full word.Searching for "three *mice",therefore,finds:three blind mice, three blue mice,three green mice,etc.
What good is the full-word wildcard?It ’s certainly not as useful as stemming, but then again, it ’s not as confusing to the beginner. One *is a stand-in for one word; two *signifies two words,and so on. The full-word wild-card comes in handy in the following situations:
•Avoiding the 10 word limit [Hack #5] on Google queries. You ’ll most frequently run into these examples when you ’re trying to find song lyrics or a quote;plugging the phrase "Fourscore and seven years ago,our fathers brought forth on this continent "into Google will search only as far as the word "on," every word after that will be ignored by Google.
•Checking the frequency of certain phrases and derivatives of phrases, like:intitle:"methinks the *doth protest too much"and intitle:"the
*of Seville".
•Filling in the blanks on a fitful memory.Perhaps you remember only a short string of song lyrics; search only using what you remember rather than randomly reconstructed full lines.
Let ’s take as an example the disco anthem "Good Times "by Chic. Consider the line:"You silly fool,you can ’t change your fate."
Perhaps you ’ve heard that lyric,but you can ’t remember if the word "fool "is correct or if it ’s something else.If you ’re wrong (if the correct line is,for example,"You silly child, you can ’t change your fate "), your search will find no results and you ’ll come away with the sad conclusion that no one on the Internet has bothered to post lyrics to Chic songs.
The solution is to run the query with a wildcard in place of the unknown word,like so:
You can use this technique for quotes,song lyrics,poetry,and more. You should be mindful, however,to include enough of the quote that you find unique results. Searching for "you *fool"will glean you far too many false hits. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
