| Search and technology news Hack writers take on Google Google search is so easy that anyone can use it to find relevant information. But it's even more powerful in the hands of those who know a few tricks of the trade. Google Hacks, a new O'Reilly book offers insights into special Google features and advanced search techniques that turn even a novice researcher into a professional fact-finder. This collection of 100 industrial-strength tips and tools explains how to use Google's advanced search to maximum effect and walks through different commands that can be inserted into a search to narrow the focus. It also discusses the new Google Web APIs (application programming interfaces) – detailing how even non-programmers can build and modify scripts to make custom business applications based on Google search. While it may sound like we have a vested interest in sales of the book, Google doesn't receive a penny of the proceeds. However we do believe that the more you know about our search service, the more likely it is you'll use it. Some suggestions discussed in Hack #31: Google Images Special Syntaxes Google Images offers a few special syntaxes (to be followed by your keyword) that can help you focus your search:
Want to drive traffic?
Try the Free way
If you manage a website and don't offer Google search to your
users, there's good news and bad news for you. First, the bad
news: You're missing an opportunity to keep users coming back
to your site. A Google search box says that you offer a complete
resource that will provide them with everything they want to find.
Now the good news: You can add Google search to your site for
free. You can even customize results pages to include your logo
or other brand elements. To see all the options Google offers
webmasters and site owners, visit http://www.google.com/services/free.html
Now Google users can sesha i-Google and Google uphendlo, thanks to newly launched interfaces in Xhosa and Zulu. That brings the grand total of languages Google offers to 86, but don't blink or there may be more. These translations were done by Google in Your Language volunteers at translate.org.za, a project of the Zuza Software Foundation. They're also working up a version in Sotho, another of South Africa's 11 official languages. Interested in joining the global volunteer network that's translating Google's search interface and help pages? Curious about the status of languages with translations underway? Visit the Google in Your Language and Translation Status Report pages to learn more. If you prefer to use Google in a language other than English, check out Google's language tools to change your interface language to something a bit more exotic, or visit the Preferences page to search for results in a specific tongue. One way of lending the world a bit of your brain power is by enabling Google Compute, a Google Toolbar feature fresh out of Google Labs. Google Compute makes it easy to donate your computer's unused cycles to worthy scientific causes, such as medical research and global climate modeling, using the same distributed computing expertise that Google applies to search. The project now supported by Google Compute is Folding@home, an initiative that aims to understand protein folding and protein aggregation as a way of developing treatments for a number of life-threatening diseases. To take part, visit the Google Compute page. The Google homepage celebrated two notable birthdays in the month of March: Michelangelo's
on March 6,
and Albert Einstein's on March 14. For his own birthday on March 31, Dennis Hwang, creator of these and many other beloved brand deviations, took a well-deserved break. News about the industry
Daum
South Korea's leading portal has placed Google's search on its
site, putting access to billions of pages of content just a click
away for their 34 million registered subscribers.
Lee Soo-hyung, chief of the company's online search engine division
was quoted as saying "To improve Daum's online search engine,
we selected Google as our partner. Through integration of the
world's best search engine with Daum's rich Internet contents,
we are able to offer the best search service."
Google continues to grow its network of global partners, also
recently signing agreements with Amazon
and Walt
Disney.
100,000 advertisers can't be wrong
We've always viewed Google's rapid growth as an indication our
service is useful to a large number of people. In fact, Google
and its partners currently serve more than 200 million searches
per day around the world. So we were especially gratified to note
a similar rapid rise in use of our advertising program among businesses
of all sizes. The number of advertisers partnering with Google
recently passed the 100,000 mark, making Google's advertising
network the largest and fastest-growing on Earth. We attribute
that success to the effectiveness of keyword and context
targeted ads and to the fact that for advertisers, as well
as for users, it's all about results.
Up and at it Down Under
The need for information crosses all borders – including
the International Date Line and the Equator. On March 25, Google
did too, with the opening of a new
sales office in Sydney. The new office brings Google's performance-based
ad programs to advertisers and agencies throughout Australia and
New Zealand. Our team in Sydney also announced partnerships to
provide web search and Google
AdWords sponsored links to Fairfax's f2 Network and News Interactive,
enabling Google advertisers to reach nearly half of the Australian
Internet population.
Making web publishing pay
Google's new content-targeted
ad service applies the precision of search advertising to
the rest of the web, using Google technology to identify the meaning
of a webpage and automatically serve relevant ads. This is a great
boon to publishers of large and small sites alike, as it easily
enables them to generate revenue from targeted advertising on
rapidly changing pages.
Charter participants include Knight Ridder (the San Jose Mercury
News, the Detroit Free Press, the Miami Herald, and the Philadelphia
Inquirer) and HowStuffWorks.
Adding Applied Semantics
And to ensure an unmatched ability to accurately understand
the content of web pages, Google has acquired Applied Semantics,
a Santa Monica-based provider of targeted web advertising products.
The resulting combination of technologies will improve both the
targeting of advertising and the relevance of search results for
all Google users. You can read more about this acquisition in
the press
release. Interesting finds Gearing up for the Google US Puzzle Championship There's nothing Googlers love more than a challenge. So when crawling and serving relevant results from a 3 billion page index gets monotonous, members of our staff often turn to puzzles of a different sort. In fact, one of our engineers is a regular finalist at the World Puzzle Championship held each year. To encourage better recreational brain usage, Google is pleased to announce it has signed on as name sponsor of the Google U.S. Puzzle Championship. To give you a taste of the competition, we've included three sample puzzles below. Solve them all and we may have a slot for you in our engineering department. If you'd prefer to see how others tackled the problems, click on the answers link below. And to find other puzzles, check out the Google US Puzzle Championship site. Puzzle #1 – Corral (Dave Tuller)
Puzzle #2 – Four or Five Easy Pieces
(Robert Wainwright)
Puzzle #3 – Sum Place (Craig Kasper) Wait! Don't lose my place…
Based on a real but utterly unscientific sample of books lying
open on Googler desks:
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