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 self-explanatory.

• 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 one-shot 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]