I have been a fan of Google for many an age, touting its search engine prowess and virtues to anyone who would listen. I even did an Honors research project in college on search engine technology focusing primarily on Google. If you are curious about what happens behind the scenes, you should check out this link, it will tell you all about it. If you want to read the original Stanford paper that Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page wrote about their new search engine, check it out here.

I was recently tooling around the Google site to see what nifty things I could do that I hadn't previously known about. I found a number of interesting tips, tricks, and technology that I thought the loyal readers of WITFITS might find interesting and/or useful. Without further ado I give to you...

Kato Presents: "Google and You", A Search-Engine Awareness Program Info Packet.

Services
Google provides a number of specialty services, mostly related to searching. Here's a relatively complete list:

• Alerts - Receive news and search results via email.
• Answers - Ask a question, set a price, get an answer.
• Catalogs - Search and browse mail-order catalogs.
• Directory - Browse the web by topic.
• Froogle - Shop smarter with Google.
• Groups - Create mailing lists and discussion groups.
• Images - Search for images on the web.
• Local - Find local businesses and services.
• Mobile - Use Google on your mobile phone.
• News -Search thousands of news stories.
• Scholar - Search scholarly papers.
• Special Searches - Search within specific topics (currently: U.S. Government, Linux, BSD, Apple Macintosh, and Microsoft) .
• University Search - Search a specific school's website.

Tools
Google also has a number of applications available:

• Blogger - Express yourself online. WITFITS is, obviously, a Blogger blog.
• Code - Download APIs and open source code.
• Desktop Search - Search your own computer. A great alternative to Windows' search utility, it allows you to search through Outlook Email, Outlook Express, Netscape Mail/Thunderbird, Word, Netscape/Firefox/Mozilla, Internet Explorer, Excel, PDF, Powerpoint, AOL Instant Messenger, Music, Images, and Video.
• Hello - Instant message your pictures to friends. It can also be used to upload pictures to a Blogger blog ("photoblogging") via the BloggerBot.
• Keyhole - Explore the world from your PC. A very cool application that allows you zoom from satellite level to street level on a virtual earth. It combines fly-over photos, topography, and map information. Unfortunately, the free trial only lasts 7 days.
• Picasa - Find, edit and share your photos. It's like a photo album for your computer.
• Toolbar - Add a search box to your browser. The Google Toolbar is one of the greatest web browser plug-ins of all time, in my opinion. In addition to the handiness of always having a Google web search bar at my fingertips, it allow you to search images, news, groups, web directory, Froogle, and just the current website you are on, includes a very capable pop-up blocker, an auto filler that will automatically fill in your name, address, etc. (great for online Christmas shopping), and has a highlighting feature that lets you type words into the search box and then highlight and jump to those terms on the page you are viewing (so very tasty). The version 3 beta includes a sweet spellchecker for web forms (I expect no more illiterate comments from you folks, and way better than the built-in Blogger one) and a map lookup feature that takes addresses on a page and gives you directions (unfortunately I wasn't able to get this feature to work particularly well).
• Translate - View web pages in other languages. Check out "I Blog, Therefore I Am" in French.

Search Tips and Tools
Here's where it gets fun. Google has a bunch of nifty features just for searching, and quite a few ways you can tweak your queries to get better results. Here are some of the more interesting things I found:

• Advanced Query Operators:
  cache: Shows the version of the web page that Google has in its cache.
  link: Will list webpages that have links to the specified webpage.
  related: Will list web pages that are "similar" to a specified web page.
  define: Will provide a definition of the words you enter after it, gathered from various online sources. The definition will be for the entire phrase entered (i.e., it will include all the words in the exact order you typed them).
  stocks: Google will treat the rest of the query terms as stock ticker symbols, and will link to a page showing stock information for those symbols.
  site: Google will restrict the results to those websites in the given domain.
  allintitle: Google will restrict the results to those with all of the query words in the title.
  intitle: Google will restrict the results to documents containing that word in the title.
  allinurl: Google will restrict the results to those with all of the query words in the url.
  inurl: Google will restrict the results to documents containing that word in the url.
• Calculator - To use Google's built-in calculator function, simply enter the calculation you'd like done into the search box and hit the enter key or click on the Google Search button. The calculator can solve math problems involving basic arithmetic, more complicated math, units of measure and conversions, and physical constants.
• Definitions - To see a definition for a word or phrase, simply type the word "define," then a space, and then the word(s) you want defined. If Google has seen a definition for the word or phrase on the Web, it will retrieve that information and display it at the top of your search results. I prefer to use "define:blahblahblah" (mentioned above) because it returns just the definitions as opposed to links to the pages.
• File Type Search - If you wish to get results with a specific file type type filetype:[extension] within the search box along with your search term(s). Supported filetypes.
• Local Search - Google Local enables you to search the entire web for just those stores and businesses in a specific neighborhood. Include a city or zip code in your search and Google displays relevant results from that region at the top of your search results.
• Movies - To find reviews and showtimes for movies playing near you, type "movies", "showtimes" or the name of a current film into the Google search box. If you've already saved your location by using Google Local, the top search result will display showtimes for nearby theaters for the movie you've chosen. To find theatres and showtimes near you for a currently playing movie, simply search for the movie’s name. Can't remember a movie title, or just looking for something new to see? You can use the "movie:" operator to search for films related to a specific actor, director or plot detail.
• Phone Book - To find listings for a US business, type the business name into the Google search box, along with the city and state. Or type the business name and zip code. Entering the phone number with area code will also return a complete business listing.
  You can find listings for U.S. residences too, follow the link to see details on how to formulate the search.
• Search By Number - Parcel tracking IDs, patents and other specialized numbers can be entered into Google's search box for quick access to information about them. Search by number types include: UPS tracking numbers, FedEx tracking numbers, USPS tracking numbers, Vehicle ID (VIN) numbers, UPC codes, Telephone area codes, Patent numbers, FAA airplane registration numbers, FCC equipment IDs.
• Google Maps - To use Google to find street maps, enter a U.S. street address, including zip code or city/state, in the Google search box. Often, the street address and city name will be enough. Google Maps is very cool, and they just added satellite imagery to the tool, which makes it even cooler.
• Travel Information - To see delays and weather conditions at a particular airport, type the airport's three letter code followed by the word "airport." To check the status of a U.S. flight, type the name of the airline followed by the flight number.
• Weather - To see weather conditions and a four-day forecast for a particular U.S. location, type "weather," followed by the location. Usually a city name will be enough, but you may also want to include a state or zipcode.

So there you have it, lots of power in one little search tool. Most of the information was gleaned from the following pages: Google Services and Tools, Google Web Search Features, Google's Advanced Search, and Advanced Google Search Operators.

Trivia: When Google was a Stanford research project, it was nicknamed BackRub because the technology checks backlinks to determine a site's importance.

Tags: Google