Using Google to Search the
Internet
What’s a section on Google doing in a book on displaying and sharing
digital images? It’s here because new digital photography products and
services are introduced almost daily, and if you know how to use Google
you can locate information about them.
There are a lot of search engines on the Web, but Google is by far and
away the most popular because of its accuracy. When you search for a word
or phrase you're not just thrown 30,000 random links to explore. Instead,
Google ranks pages so the most popular, and presumably best, are listed
first. What gets pages there? It's the number of other sites that have
linked to them, and the quality of those sites. Google considers a link
from page A to page B as a vote for page B. But beyond that, it also ranks
the page that links. Links from sites that are themselves more highly
ranked weigh more heavily.
To use Google, you go to:
http://www.google.com.
The Screen
At the top of the Google screen are tabs that you can click to access
various services. Many of them also have links to an advanced search page
where you can specify
special search instructions.
 Web
searches the Web for pages that contain the specific words or phrases you
enter.
Images lets you search for images using the same search techniques
that you use to locate text. Keep in mind that the images you find are
probably protected by copyrights. If you plan on using them, you should
contact the site owner to obtain permission. You can use the filetype:
operator to limit the search to a specific file type. For example, to
locate just JPG images of a sunflower, enter sunflower filetype:jpg in the
image search box. To search for images of a specific size click the link
to the Advanced Image Search page. Options include image size, coloration,
and file format.
Groups lets you post and view comments in Usenet newsgroups. This is a
good place to search for what people are saying about products and
services.
Directory lets you search by category.
News searches news outlets. The stories are current and helpful when
trying to follow developments in a fast changing technology. For example,
searching for news on camera phone will display a number of recent stories
on new developments in this field.
The heart of the program is the deceptively simple search box where you
type the words or phrases you want to search for. When you then press
click the Google Search button, all pages on the Web containing the
words or phrases you entered are listed. The listing displays a title of
the page, a brief description, and a link you can click to jump to it.
Other information is also displayed on the results screen so explore it at
your leisure.
Basic Searches
In most cases, a search is quite easy. To make it more productive, here
are some tips.
Don't
bother entering common keywords such as "where" and "how", or certain
single digits and single letters, since Google ignores them because there
are so many occurrences they slow down the search without adding accuracy.
When Google ignores words, it displays details on the results page just
below the search box. If a common word is essential to getting the results
you want, you can include it by putting a "+" sign in front of it. (Be
sure to include a space before the "+" sign.)
Use
the most unique word(s) you can think of. For example, searching for
Canon lenses instead of lenses will get you more specific
pages.
Keep
terms as specific as possible; general terms will turn up too many hits.
Don’t search for photography when you’re interested in digital
photography.
To
eliminate all pages that contain a specific word, enter the word preceeded
by a minus sign. For example, to find digital cameras other than Minolta,
type digital cameras -Minolta.
Google
only returns pages containing all of the words in your query. To narrow a
search just add more words.
The
order in which you enter terms affects the search results. Enter the most
important and specific words first.
To
search for a phrase, enclose it in quotation marks.
Google
searches are NOT case sensitive so you can use any mix of upper- and
lowercase letters.
Google
does support wildcards such as ? or *.
Search
for both the singular and plural form of a word because the results will
vary. For example, searching for digital camera is likely to turn up lots
of links to people talking about their own camera. Searching for digital
cameras will turn up manufacturers, retailers, and educators that deal
with lots of cameras.
Category Searches
Clicking Directory displays the Google Web Directory (located at
directory.google.com). This is a good place to start if you're not exactly
sure which search keywords to use. For example, searching for [ Saturn
] within the Science > Astronomy category of the Google Web
Directory returns only pages about the planet Saturn, while searching for
[ Saturn ] within the Automotive category returns only pages
about Saturn cars. Searching within a category of interest allows you to
quickly narrow in on only the most relevant pages to you.
To do a category search, click the Directory tab at the top of
Google’s page, then start clicking your way down to finer and finer
categories. For example, clicking Arts, then Photography,
then Digital takes you to sites specific to digital photography.
Advanced Searches
You can increase the accuracy of your searches by clicking the
Advanced Search link on Google’s home page. Many of these same
settings can be used by adding operators that fine-tune your keywords in
the search box. (Some of these choices, and others, are
also available on the Images and Groups tabs.)
Find
results with all of the words forces Google to include common words and
characters that it usually ignores such as "where" and "how", as well as
certain single digits and single letters. If they must be included you can
also put a plus sign (+) in front of the word in the search box. You can
also use quotation marks around 2 or more common words to treat them as a
phrase.
Find
results with the exact phrase searches for a complete phrase. You can do
the same thing by enclosing the phrase in double quotes in the search box.
Find
results with at least one of the words searches for pages that contain one
word OR another. You can also type an uppercase OR between the words or
phrases in the search box.
Find
results without the words excludes pages containing the specified word(s).
You can also put a minus sign (-) in front of it in the search box.
Language specifies what languages are used in searches.
File
Format specifies what file formats are searched. Choices include such
formats as Adobe PDF, Word DOC, and so on.
Date specifies how recently a document must have been posted or
revised to be included (the default is Anytime).
Occurrences specifies where your search terms occur on the page.
Choices include anywhere on the page, in the title, the url, or links.
Domain limits a search to a specific site
such as www.shortcourses.com, or excludes a site from a search. Click the
drop-down arrow to limit the search to the specified site or exclude it
from the search. You can also search a specific site by entering your
search keywords in the search box, followed by the operator site: followed
by the domain name. For example, searching for CCD
site:www.shortcourses.com searches only the Short Courses site for
pages containing the term CCD. You can also just type
site:shortcourses.com into the search string.
SafeSearch blocks Bill Brant’s and Harry Callahan’s nudes so you
aren’t shocked by their content.
Page-Specific Search finds sites that are similar to a specific web
page or linked to it. You can also use the related: or link:
operators in the search box. For example, related:www.shortcourses.com
will list web pages that are similar to the ShortCourses site. You can
also see similar sites by clicking the Similar Sites link below lists on
the search results page.
General information. To learn as much as possible about a Web page, use
the info: operator. For example, info:www.shortcourses.com
will list links you can click to see similar sites or sites that link to,
or contain the words www.shortcourses.com. You can get the same list by
typing the web page url directly into the search box.
Services and Tools
At the bottom of the main Google screen is a link to Services and
Tools. This page lists the same services listed on the tabs at the top
of the screen, but much more. One interesting one to check out is Froogle
designed to "Find products for sale from across the web."
Checking Out the Future
Google tries new tools and at some point shares them with users who
know where to look. To see what’s in the works, check out the
Google lab (http://labs.google.com).
Preferences
Many Google pages have a link to Preferences where you can specify
what language is used to display Google’s tips and headings, and to limit
displayed pages to those in a specific language.
Tips and Tricks
Enter
a person’s name followed by either a ZIP code or area code and
Google will do it’s best to list a phone number
and address.
Enter
a phone number (without hyphens) and Google will try to find the name and
address.
Enter
an address and Google will list links you can click to display a map.
Right
under the tabs, the screen displays Searched the Web for followed by the
terms you entered. Click any of the underlined words for a definition.
When
you enter a word or phrase that Google thinks is misspelled, it displays a
Did you mean? prompt followed by what it thinks is the correct
spelling. Just click it to use it.
To see
weird and interesting things users have developed for Google searches,
search for Google hacks. Or, check out the book Google Hacks at
http://www.oreilly.com or Amazon. |
