Google 301:
More Google
a presentation by
Patrick Douglas Crispen
NetSquirrel.com
Reminder: Advanced Googolgy
• Google’s goal is to “organize the world’s
information and make it universally
accessible and useful.”
• Web searching [and advertising] comprises
70% of Google’s core business.
• Google 201 [available for download at
netsquirrel.com] focuses on how to get the
most out of that core 70%.
– Search engine math
– Advanced search operators
Source: Google Factory Tour
Our Goals
• Answer the question “what else can I do with
Google?”
• Discover the “core plus more.”
– Talk about some overlooked core search tools
and services.
– Look at some of Google’s newest inventions,
including a LOT of Google tools still in beta.
• Find out where to get more Google-related
help and information.
• DO ALL OF THIS IN ENGLISH!
How Google Spends Its Time and
Resources
• 70% Core: Search and
Ads
– Examples: Crawling,
Ranking, AdWords,
Toolbar, AdSense
• 20% Related:
Extensions of Core
Search
– Examples: News,
Froogle, GSA, Desktop,
Local, Gmail and other
communication projects
• 10% Exploratory
– Examples: Picasa,
Keyhole, Orkut
Source: Google Factory Tour
Part 1: more about search
“I’m feeling Lucky”
• The “I’m Feeling
Lucky” button takes
you directly to the
first web page
Google returns for
your query.
• You won’t see any
other search results.
Source: http://www.google.com/help/features.html#lucky
Google bombing
• “Google bombing” is an attempt to influence
a certain page’s Google ranking.
• If enough people create web pages that use
the same anchor text to point to the same
web page [for example, if several hundred
web pages linked the phrase “cow poly” to
www.auburn.edu], you can force that page to
become Google’s first hit.
• And “I’m Feeling Lucky” automatically takes
you to that first hit.
Examples of Google bombs
• Three examples:
– Failure
– Great President
– French Military Victories
• Is this Google’s fault? NO!
– Google bombs AREN’T editorial
statements by Google.
– People are just “gaming” PageRank.
– “Fixing” this would be a slippery slope.
Advanced Search options
To the right of the
search box are three
links practically no
one has never
noticed:
– Advanced Search
– Preferences
– Language Tools
Advanced Search: Find Results
• You [should] already know how do all of
these on Google Homepage’s using search
engine math [which is covered in Google
201.]
• The only new thing is the number of results
pull-down list in the upper right corner.
Advanced Search: Other Options
• You [should] already know how to do file
format, occurrences, and domain searches
from the Google homepage.
• Most of the rest are self-explanatory.
Usage Rights – No Filter
• Aren’t filtered by
license = “show me
everything.”
• This is a default
Google search.
Usage Rights – Reuse Filter
• Allow some form of
reuse = “show me stuff
I can reuse with
restrictions.”
– You must attribute the
work.
– You cannot use the work
for commercial purposes.
• See
http://tinyurl.com/b245b
for more information.
Usage Rights – Freely Modify
• Can be freely
modified, adapted,
or built upon =
“stuff I can reuse
with attribution.”
• See
http://tinyurl.com/
dtuu3 for more
information.
Advanced Search v. Preferences
• Advanced Search =
“search once using
these settings.”
• Preferences =
– “Change the way
Google works for me
from here on out.”
– Changes every
Google service you
use, not just search.
Google Preferences
• When you change your Google preferences,
Google writes a cookie to your hard drive.
• Your Google preferences are “permanent”
until you:
– Change your preferences.
– Toss your cookies.
• In Internet Explorer: Tools > Options > Delete Cookies
• In Mozilla/Firefox: Tools > Options > Privacy > Clear
Cookies.
– Go to http://www.google.com.
• The extra period at the end forces you to go to the
English language version of Google.
Source: Google Hacks 2nd Ed, p. 21
Interface Language
• Interface Language lets you change the default
language used to display the interface of every
Google page you visit.
• Change the Interface Language to Chinese
(Traditional), save your preferences, and watch what
happens…
Interface Language Limitations
• Notice the hits are still in English.
– Google doesn’t translate the hits to your default
language. Yet.
• The only thing that’s changed is the default
language of Google’s interface.
Using Interface Language
• This is great for foreign language immersion.
• This is also a WONDERFUL practical joke to
play on a friend or colleague.
– “Hey, why is Google in LATIN!?”
• Remember, your Google preferences are
“permanent” until you:
– Change your preferences.
– Toss your cookies.
– Go to http://www.google.com.
Preferences: Search Language
(Sharoff 2006) used Google API to collect 100M word
corpora of English, Chinese, French, German, Italian,
Japanese, Spanish, Polish and Russian, see
http://corpus.leeds.ac.uk/internet.html
Preferences: SafeSearch
Filtering
• Google's SafeSearch Filtering screens for sites that
contain explicit sexual content and deletes them
from your search results.
• By default, it only filters explicit images.
• To filter both images and text, choose “Use strict
filtering.”
Source: http://www.google.com/help/customize.html#safe
More Preferences
• Number of Results and Results Window are selfexplanatory.
• Remember, your Google preferences are
“permanent” until you:
– Change your preferences.
– Toss your cookies.
Wait. There’s More!
Language Tools
• Like Advanced Search, Language Tools is a oneshot deal.
• Use Language Tools if
– You don’t want to permanently change your Interface or
Search languages.
– You want to translate text.
Google Translate
• Using Language Tools, you can
– Translate keyed in text from one language to another.
– Translate a web page’s text from one language to another.
• Be looking for even more robust translation tools
from Google in the not-too-distant future.
Part One: In Summary
• The “I’m Feeling Lucky”
button takes you
directly to the first web
page Google returns for
your query.
• Advanced Search and
Language Tools are
one-shot deals.
• Preferences are
permanent and global
until you change them
or delete your cookies.
Part 2: other searches
• In Google 201 you learned that when
Google’s spiders report back, they
send Google a complete copy of
everything they find – HTML, text,
images, etc.
• Google’s web search gets all of the
attention – it consumes 70% of
Google’s time and energy.
• But why not make the other stuff the
spiders find searchable as well?
Google Image Search
Behind the Scenes
• “Hey, let’s take all these cached images and
make them searchable.”
• Search on the TEXT that comes with images
(ALT tags, …) – NOT “image recognition”
• Two ways to get to Google Image Search
– images.google.com
– Go to Google [or Google Groups, Google News,
Froogle, or Google Local/Google Maps] and click
on the “Images” link.
Using Google Image Search
• Search engine math works here as well.
• Search on nearby text – a “mini document”
• Check out Advanced Image Search [to the
right of the search box] for special size,
filetype, and coloration options.
• Beware of copyright!
– Google cannot grant you any rights to use the
images you find for any purpose other than
viewing them on the web.
– To reuse the images, contact the site owner and
obtain the requisite permissions.
Google News [Beta]
Behind the Scenes
• “Hey, let’s take news articles from
4,500 online news sites and make them
searchable.”
• Two ways to get to Google News
– news.google.com
– Go to Google [or Google Groups, Google
News, Froogle, or Google Local/Google
Maps] and click on the “News” link.
How Google News Works
• Every 15 minutes, Google gathers stories
from more than 4,500 English-language news
sites.
• A computer program automatically arranges
the stories by relevance and popularity.
– Sound familiar? [*cough* PageRank *cough*]
– There are no editors or human intervention.
– Google’s algorithms run everything.
• And if you don’t want to browse the news,
you can also search the news by keyword[s.]
Source: http://news.google.com/intl/en_us/about_google_news.html
Froogle [Beta]
Behind the Scenes
• “Hey, let’s take all these cached web pages
on which merchants are trying to sell stuff
and make those pages searchable.”
• Three ways to get to Froogle
– froogle.com
– http://www.google.com/products
– Go to Google [or Google Groups, Google News,
Froogle, or Google Local/Google Maps] and click
on the “Froogle” link.
How Froogle Works
Adapted from: http://froogle.google.com/froogle/tour/index.html?promo=help
googlesightseeing.com
The Hidden 20% [and 10% More]