Web & communication software

Maximum Google

Maximum Google

We've found more than 25 ways to customize your Google searches; locate the sites, images, and news you want faster; and train Google to work even smarter--more the way you do.

Illustration by: Leo EspinosaMaster Essential Search Secrets

Highlight Search Terms on a Web Page On some large and complex Web pages, it can be hard to find the text related to your search query. Don't despair--the Google Toolbar gives you two cool tools. Click its Google button, choose Toolbar Options, scroll to 'Finding words within a page', and fill the check boxes next to the Highlight and Word Find buttons. From now on, you can click the Highlight button on the toolbar to toggle colored highlighting of the words in your most recent search, or you can click one of your search word icons beside the Highlight button to find the next occurrence of the search words.

Use the Toolbar Google's handiest tool is its toolbar (toolbar.google.com), which augments Internet Explorer with a search field and links to other Google services: The toolbar lets you initiate a search--even an advanced one--more quickly than by loading Google's page every time. All of our tips assume that you can use the toolbar. But there's a catch: The toolbar works only with IE 5 or later. Users of other browsers can drag and drop Google buttons onto the toolbar, instead (see Google's "Our Search: Browser Buttons" page for instructions), or download GGSearch, a third-party plug-in for Google (and other search engines) that works with most browsers, including IE.

Quick Tip Save space in Google's Toolbar with the Combined Search feature, which turns one search button into a drop-down menu of search options. Click the Google button, and select Toolbar Options. Clear all of the Search Buttons check boxes, and click experimental features, a link near the bottom of the page. On the new page, fill in the Combined Search button check box, and click OK twice.

Results Open a New Window If you left-click a link on a Google search results page, you might lose your way back to the search results. Instead, tell Google to open a new browser window with each click--the same effect as if you use the Open in New Window option, only easier. In the Google Toolbar, click the Google button and select Search Preferences Page. Fill in the check box labeled Open search results in a new browser window.

German sausage and baked beans? Google makes pretty good guesses even with odd translations.

Translate Whole Pages I often get search results for Web pages written in German, but English is easier for me to read. Google can translate an entire Web page from German, Spanish, French, Italian, or Portuguese into English--or vice versa. To do this, simply copy the page's address, click the Google button on the toolbar, select Language Tools, paste the copied URL into the 'Translate a web page' field, make your language selection from the drop-down list, and click Translate. Presto!

Translate Foreign Phrases Google can quickly turn a phrase in French, German, Italian, Portuguese, or Spanish, or it can translate something from any of those languages into English. On the Language Tools page mentioned above, enter the phrase you want translated in the 'Translate text' box, and use the drop-down list beneath it to pick your language. Computerized translation is still in its infancy, so be warned: Google text may elicit a puzzled response from native speakers.

What's the Date? Google doesn't let you search by date, but you can work around this limitation by using plus and/or minus signs (hyphens) next to a date or year. If you want to view only articles about the 2003 tour of the band REM, for example, try "REM tour" +2003 -2000 -2001 -2002. If that's not good enough, or if you need to search by date often, try the Google Ultimate Interface, a cool site that lets you add more parameters for Google searches, including date ranges, file types, language, and country.

Search Engine Dictionary Need a dictionary definition fast? Search for the word, and then click the underlined word in the blue bar at the top of the results page. Google checks the spelling, too, and offers a correction, if necessary. Just enter spell: followed by the word. Try it: Enter spell: troble.

Native tongue-twister: Google's Preferences page lets you choose the language that appears in the search engine's user interface. Qa'Pla!

Search for Shakespeare in the Original Klingon Multilingual Web searchers rejoice: You need suffer no longer the ignominy of having to use an English-language interface in Google. You can modify Google's interface so that its menus, buttons, and advanced search fields are labeled in any of 88 languages or language variations (including a few silly ones, like Pig Latin, Elmer Fudd, and, yes, even Klingon). On the Google home page, click the Preferences link and then choose a language from the Interface Language drop-down menu, located at the top of the page.

Find People, Places, and Things

Illustration by: Leo EspinosaWhat Did Others Think of This Site? What do folks on other Web sites have to say about the pages you find? Instead of conducting a normal search, give WebQuotes a spin. The results include commentary (if there is any) about the result pages, published by other Web sites. You'll get the most value out of this tool on queries about large, well-known Web sites. For example, Enter amazon into WebQuotes to see what others have to say about the online bookseller.

News You Choose Google News, though comprehensive and frequently updated, can't be customized. Maybe you want only business news. Try this: Drag the linked name of a section, like Business, to IE's Links toolbar, and then click that link when you want to see that news. Links to the other Google news sections appear on the left side of each news section's page.

Find Words Within a URL If you know part of the URL, precede your Google search terms with allinurl: to search for words within the URL itself. For instance, if you're looking for a Sony remote control, you might try allinurl: sony remote control.

Google Gets Around If you're looking for a street map, don't bother loading a special mapping page and tabbing from one address field to the next. Instead, just stick the address into Google's search field and you'll get two ready-to-go links--one of them to Yahoo Maps, and the other to MapQuest--listed just before the first search result.

Did Google Grab Your Site? Ever wondered whether your Web site is listed in Google's database? For the fewest and most accurate hits, substitute your Web site's domain name for each example in example site:www.example.com, and enter it into Google's search box.

In address searches, don't worry about including capital letters or punctuation such as commas and periods in your search terms--Google ignores them, anyway.

Address, Puleeze? In most places, renting a reverse telephone directory could cost you a lot of money. But Google is like a free reverse directory. Type the area code and phone number (with a space between them), and there's a good chance that you'll get not only the person and company name for that number, but also their address listed before any search results.

Quick Tip Want to unlist yourself from Google's phone book for privacy reasons? Head to the Google Phonebook Name Removal page, fill in Google's Web form, and submit it (businesses must send the request by snail mail).

Get Images Immediately Need a picture of, say, a 1949 Ford hot rod? Google Image Search found more than a dozen. For best results, select Advanced Image Search and start with the 'related to the exact phrase' field. You can sharpen your search by choosing specific file types, or a particular image size or color.

Take stock of your investments quickly, by searching on the ticker symbol of the company you're interested in.

The Quicker Stock Ticker Picker If you know the ticker symbol for your mutual fund or NYSE, NASDAQ, or AMEX stock, let Google use it to search for financial details. Enter the symbol, and click the Show stock quotes link at the top of the search results screen to get a special Google page loaded with pertinent data from Yahoo Finance, along with tabs that take you to stock information pages on ClearStation, The Motley Fool, MSN MoneyCentral, and Quicken.com.

Clean Up Your Search Results

Illustration by: Leo EspinosaMore Search for Your Click If you have a broadband connection, don't limit yourself to ten results per page. You can raise the count to 30 results per page for a scant additional delay of a nanosecond or two. Make the changes in Google's Preferences page (in the Google Toolbar, click the Google button and choose Search Preferences Page).

Search Within Sites Say you're doing a search for a Home Office column about macro programs. Start at PC World's home page, enter "steve bass" macro into the Google Toolbar's search field, and click the Search Site button. If you want a keyboard macro program, add keyboard to the field and drill down to the relevant columns.

Trim Excess Results Google probably gives you more results than you want if you're searching for something popular, like "Beatles." Instead of trying to wade through the almost 2.7 million results (in this case), tighten your search by first choosing Music under the Arts category in Google's Directory.

Quick Tip To hunt through the Directory fast, search for "Beatles" (say), and click the results page's Directory tab. You'll get fewer, more-focused results.

Use the Adult Filter To banish adult-oriented text and images from search results, click Google's Preferences link, scroll down to SafeSearch Filtering, and select Use Strict Filtering.

Grab an Opinion There's no better place to find out what others think--about pretty much anything--than on Google Groups, an archive of Usenet discussion group posts. But you can easily find yourself overwhelmed by huge numbers of results. Narrow your search by using Google's Advanced Groups Search page, and change the Message Dates drop-down to something more manageable--say, past year.

Quick Tip If a specific group relates to your search, Google will tell you so, listing it immediately below the yellow line that says "Related groups."

Get More Results If you're faced with too few search results, it's time to use Google's "Similar Pages" link and check whether Google's "repeat the search with the omitted results included" option is included at the bottom of the page. In many cases, you can glean enough information to make that search (or the next one) successful.

View in HTML Google often lists Adobe PDF files in results. To browse the contents of these without opening Acrobat Reader, click the View as HTML link. The presentation isn't always pretty, but you can get a quick look at the text to help you decide whether to download the whole kaboodle.

If you don't remember an entire quotation, you can stitch it together with asterisks. Each asterisk stands for one missing word in the sentence or phrase.

Drill Down With Wild-Card Searches To find a phrase or quote, you don't have to know the entire line. Wrap a portion of the quote that you know in quotation marks; to get better results, add related words, like the speaker's name.

Get to Know Google's Sections--and Other Engines Finally, use the chart on the next page as a quick reference to find prices, answers, images, and more in Google's specialized sections. Check out the search engine alternatives on page 5, and learn how to uncache yourself from Google on page 6.

Contributing Editor Steve Bass writes the Home Office column and runs the Pasadena IBM Users Group. Contact him at homeoffice@pcworld.com.Getting to Know Google (chart)The Competition: Search Alternatives Offer Cool Features

You shouldn't rely exclusively on Google for your Web searches. From time to time, it makes sense to use one of these other search engines.

Alltheweb, like Google, is graphically sparse, so it responds to search requests with blazing speed. It's also hot on the heels of Google with News, Pictures, Video, Audio, and FTP file tabs. AlltheWeb is smart, too. For example, Advanced Search (under Video) lets you specify whether you want streamed or downloadable files, and in which video file format.

Ilor simplifies the task of keeping track of links while searching. Let your cursor hover over any link on a page of ILor's search results, and up pops the Lorlinks menu, which contains various handy tools. One tool sticks links into a pop-up box for your convenience (you can e-mail the links to a buddy later, for example). Another tool adds the saved links to your Favorites list.

ProFusion allows you to search within 22 broad categories, including legal, living, career, technology, science, and travel. ProFusion's Alerts feature notifies you by e-mail when a designated page changes or when new results appear for search queries you specify.

Teoma enhances typical search results by including links to "refinements"--search terms that you might logically use to narrow a search. For example, if you search on the word "airplane," Teoma provides links to popular radio-controlled airplane hobby sites, with refinement links to "airplane tickets," "paper airplane," and even "Jefferson Airplane."

Vivisimo breaks down search results into category clusters, enabling you to quickly choose the most valuable URLs. If you search on "scuba," for example, Vivisimo builds a left pane with subcategories such as magazines, equipment, and islands. You can also search any of 30 specific sites or portals, including CNN, the New York Times, and EBay.

Search Controversy The Curse of the Cache: Is Google's Memory Too Good?

After a messy divorce, the last thing Diane K. Jensen wanted to be reminded of was her husband--or the online business that they used to run together from their home in Sarasota, Florida.

Unfortunately, she continued to receive customer inquiries more than six months after she asked her ISP to take down the site. Jensen blames Google, where she can still find parts of her old site preserved in the cache. Google's cache servers store entire Web pages and sites.

"I was going through a very traumatic experience; and each time I got an e-mail, it would remind me of what I was--and still am--going through," she says.

The cache is one of the favorite tools of many Googlers because it lets them browse archived Web pages that may have changed recently or that were hosted on servers that subsequently went offline.

But not everyone wants retired pages to stay in the cache. Weeks after September 11, 2001, Webmasters for the nation's utilities and mass transit agencies removed sensitive Web pages, fearing that terrorists might use the information to attack those facilities. Months later, visitors found the pages in Google and on other caching sites.

When businesses find their copyrighted data illegally published on the Web, it's not enough to go after the site; they must also ask Google to remove any reference to it, including links on other sites, from its cache. Google has received nearly a hundred such requests, according to the Chilling Effects Clearinghouse.

A Google spokesperson says that old pages drop out of the cache every four to six weeks. Jensen's site may have stayed in the cache longer because her Web hosting service removed only a few pages from the site, so the site still looks active.

Caching isn't just a Google headache. In fact, experts cite the Way Back Machine as a bigger problem. That site lets you view snapshots of whole Web sites, year by year, and it never deletes the files that it stores in its cache.

What You Can Do

Recent improvements to the back end of Google's cache make it easier for you to remove your pages from Google's cache, or to prevent their being stored:

--To have Google drop your entire Web site, one or more pages, or just snippets from its cache, visit Google's Remove Content page, where you can learn how to remove pages from the cache or to prevent Google from caching sites.

--To stop a page from being cached, add META NAME="googlebot" content="noarchive" in the HEAD section of the HTML files (see Google's "My Site's Listing is Incorrect" page for more details).

--Another method to eliminate Web pages from Google's cache is to replace the pages you don't want cached with blank pages in the same location and with the same file name. When Google next updates the cache for that page, it will store the blank files.

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