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The Pandia Post Newsletter No. 20, January 2004

Searching Google more efficiently

(February 1 2004) Nancy Blachman holds an M.S. in Computer Science from Stanford University, where she has taught for eight years. She is president and founder of Variable Symbols, Inc., a company that specializes in consulting and training in technical software.

She has written a book on Google searching, How to do everything with Google, together with Fritz Schneider and Eric Fredricksen, software engineers at Google. So she knows what she is talking about when she gives workshops on searching with Google.

However, before you invite her to do a workshop for your institution, you might want to take a look at her Google ~Guide web site. There she gives away a lot of web search information for free. Actually, if you print out the printer-friendly version of her site, you end up with a very useful book containing some 114 pages of Google tips and information.

The fact that Nancy has been teaching Internet novices is apparent. She takes nothing for granted, and even includes tips on how to navigate a Web page. More savvy users may skip those sections, however, and focus on the practical examples and exercises.

She is very thorough, and includes introductions to advanced Boolean searching, as well as many of the additional features available at Google, including everything from Froogle shopping search to the Google toolbar.

The guide is organized in three parts:

• Tips on searching
• Tips on how to understand and use Google's search results
• Information about Google's specialized search services

The site also includes other useful features, like the list of new Google services or features . This page includes direct links to the relevant introduction found at the site.

The book is well written and easy to understand.

Now, why does she include a tilde (~) in the name of the site?

Nancy points out that putting a tilde in front of a search term (with no space in between) effectively turns that term into any of its synonyms: "The tilde is known as synonym operator. So, if you search for "Google ~Guide," Google will find Google Guide as well as other Google tutorials."

It is tips like this one that make the Google ~Guide so useful. Yes, you may search Google right away, without reading any introduction or FAQ's, but that is like looking at only one of the channels available on your TV or driving your car in the first gear only.

If you can get all this information for free, why should you buy her book on Google searching? Well, you could argue that she gives away too much for free (although it is not that we are complaining). Still the book gives you even more information. As she says, How to do everything with Google has many more examples, more detailed descriptions, and more about the history and development of features and services in Google.

Buy How to do everything with Google from Amazon.com
Buy How to do everything with Google from Amazon.co.uk

Gigablast adds new features

(February 1 2004) Matt Wells' search engine Gigablast has added two new features that might be of interest:

Below all search listings Gigablast includes a link to the Wayback machine. The Wayback Machine includes older copies of Web pages, and may be used to find historical data.

By the way, Gigablast has also made its own cache files available, and if you clicked on "archived copy" you will be able to see how the relevant page looked like when Gigablast visited that site the last time.

At the top of each search engine results page you will also find a blue section named "Giga Bits". The Giga Bits feature generates related concepts that might help you refine and target your search query.

For instance: If you search for "search engine", Gigablast will suggest more focused search queries, like search engine optimization, search engine submission, search engine news, major search engines etc.

This has been done by others before, but the Giga Bit feature is a useful addition, all the same.

Source: Resourceshelf.

Microsoft launches toolbar

(February 1 2004) Google's toolbar has become very popular among search engine marketers, not at least because it will give you an indication of a Web page's PageRank, i.e. Google's measure of "popularity", which again is based of the number and status of inbound links to that particular webpage.

MSN does not have its own search engine (although they are working on one), but have decided to launch a toolbar all the same.

Many searchers prefer to search the Web directly from their web browser without having to go to a particular Web page, and if you can get them to use your toolbar and your search service, you will get a lot of loyal visitors.

The new MSN toolbar adds a a separate "list" of icons at the top of your Explorer browser window. It includes a search form that lets you use MSN search directly to search the Web. There is a useful "Pop-up Guard" to stop pop-up windows from appearing while you browse the Web, and there is a "Highlight Viewer" that helps you locate your search words in the search results.

The toolbar is in no way revolutionary, and there quite a few tools out there that will give you the same functions, including the Google toolbar.

The main reason for selecting the MSN toolbar must be that since MSN now is now abandoning LookSmart as a search result deliverer, the regular MSN search results will be powered by the Inktomi search engine only. The quality of MSN search results are bound to improve. If you are looking for a toolbar alternative to Google, this may be your answer.

MSN toolbar home page
An introduction to the MSN toolbar

Go to the next part: A Couple of Comments About Google

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