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Google Hacks by Tara Calishain and Rael Dornfest is back... searching Google secrets
Making the Difference Between Searching and Finding -- When all you need is a quart of milk, you don't care how many items a store has to offer. All that matters is that you can get the milk and that it's usable. And, perhaps, you'd like for the price to be reasonable, for the milk to be your favorite brand, and low-fat, ideally (because you don't like whole or skim milk); also, in a perfect world, it would be organic. It's a little like searching on the Web: the number of choices is irrelevant as long as you can find what you're looking for...but, having so much to choose from virtually ensures that you'll find what you need.
The sheer amount of information on the Web can be staggering, but today's search tools make it possible to zero in on data with amazing precision. Google is the ultimate search tool: never intimidating and so powerful that even neophyte researchers become convinced that they're wizards. However, Google itself is constantly growing and changing. To keep up with Google's extended reach, the new edition of "Google Hacks" by Tara Calishain and Rael Dornfest (O'Reilly, US $24.95)--the first and best selling book about using Google--has been updated and expanded to cover Google's new services and capabilities.
According to coauthor Calishain, the second edition of the book is vital for researchers or anybody who uses Google seriously. "Search engines are growing more and more important," says Calishain. "The first edition of 'Google Hacks' covered Google with its two billion pages. Now Google indexes eight billion, and Yahoo and MSN are right behind it. The search engine wars are back, and that means new offerings, new features, and new ultracool ways to make Google go."
Calishain notes that the new edition has been completely reorganized and offers many new searches, along with coverage of Gmail, Google Desktop, Google Site Search, and tips on using Google AdWords. But most importantly, Calishain says, "Readers will be able to use syntax in a meaningful way to narrow down their searches from the original pool of eight billion pages. Did I mention that Google has quadruple the pages it did the first time we wrote about it?"
As with the first edition, "Google Hacks, Second Edition" is a unique collection of tips and tools gathered from expert users of Google, as well as developers who work with Google's API. The book offers a variety of interesting ways for power users to mine the enormous amount of information that Google has access to, including how to:
In his foreword to the second edition of Google Hacks, Craig Silverstein, Director of Technology at Google, observes, "Since 'Google Hacks' first appeared, search has, if possible, only grown in importance. Not only is there more information than ever to be found--via email, computer hard drives, and newly digitized repositories of previously offline content--there is also a greater need to automate tasks and to locate that needle of information in a haystack that will just not stop growing."
And Calishain agrees, "Data on the Internet will only get more extensive. I think we'll see more ways of searching for it, and I think that Google will lead the way in offering different methods of cutting though the data to get what you want."
By Tara Calishain and Rael Dornfest
443 pages, $24.95 US, $36.95 CA
Several sample hacks, including "Google Your Desktop," "Import Your Contacts into Gmail," and "Determine the Worth of AdWords Words," are available online
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