Google Hacks

The Internet puts a wealth of information at your fingertips, and all you have to know is how to find it. Google is your ultimate research tool--a search engine that indexes more than 2.4 billion web pages, in more than 30 languages, conducting more than 150 million searches a day. The more you know about Google, the better you are at pulling data off the Web. You've got a cadre of techniques up your sleeve--tricks you've learned from practice, from exchanging ideas with others, and from plain old trial and error--but you're always looking for better ways to search. It's the "hacker" in you: not the troublemaking kind, but the kind who really drives innovation by trying new ways to get things done. If this is you, then you'll find new inspiration (and valuable tools, too) in Google Hacks from O'Reilly's new Hacks Series.

Google Hacks is a collection of industrial-strength, real-world, tested solutions to practical problems. The book offers a variety of interesting ways for power users to mine the enormous amount of information that Google has access to, and helps you have fun while doing it. You'll learn clever and powerful methods for using the advanced search interface and the new Google API, including how to build and modify scripts that can become custom business applications based on Google. Google Hacks contains 100 tips, tricks and scripts that you can use to become instantly more effective in your research. Each hack can be read in just a few minutes, but can save hours of searching for the right answers.

Written by experts for intelligent, advanced users, O'Reilly's new Hacks Series have begun to reclaim the term "hacking" for the good guys. In recent years the term "hacker" has come to be associated with those nefarious black hats who break into other people's computers to snoop, steal information, or disrupt Internet traffic. But the term originally had a much more benign meaning, and you'll still hear it used this way whenever developers get together. Our new Hacks Series is written in the spirit of true hackers--the people who drive innovation.

If you're a Google power user, you'll find the technical edge you're looking for in Google Hacks

Table of Contents

Credits   

Foreword   

Preface   

Chapter 1. Searching Google  

       1. Setting Preferences   

       2. Language Tools   

       3. Anatomy of a Search Result   

       4. Specialized Vocabularies: Slang and Terminology   

       5. Getting Around the 10 Word Limit   

       6. Word Order Matters   

       7. Repetition Matters   

       8. Mixing Syntaxes   

       9. Hacking Google URLs   

       10. Hacking Google Search Forms   

       11. Date-Range Searching   

       12. Understanding and Using Julian Dates   

       13. Using Full-Word Wildcards   

       14. inurl: Versus site:   

       15. Checking Spelling   

       16. Consulting the Dictionary   

       17. Consulting the Phonebook   

       18. Tracking Stocks   

       19. Google Interface for Translators   

       20. Searching Article Archives   

       21. Finding Directories of Information   

       22. Finding Technical Definitions   

       23. Finding Weblog Commentary   

       24. The Google Toolbar   

       25. The Mozilla Google Toolbar   

       26. The Quick Search Toolbar   

       27. GAPIS   

       28. Googling with Bookmarklets   

Chapter 2. Google Special Services and Collections  

       29. Google Directory   

       30. Google Groups   

       31. Google Images   

       32. Google News   

       33. Google Catalogs   

       34. Froogle   

       35. Google Labs   

Chapter 3. Third-Party Google Services  

       36. XooMLe: The Google API in Plain Old XML   

       37. Google by Email   

       38. Simplifying Google Groups URLs   

       39. What Does Google Think Of...   

       40. GooglePeople   

Chapter 4. Non-API Google Applications  

       41. Don't Try This at Home   

       42. Building a Custom Date-Range Search Form   

       43. Building Google Directory URLs   

       44. Scraping Google Results   

       45. Scraping Google AdWords   

       46. Scraping Google Groups   

       47. Scraping Google News   

       48. Scraping Google Catalogs   

       49. Scraping the Google Phonebook   

Chapter 5. Introducing the Google Web API  

       50. Programming the Google Web API with Perl   

       51. Looping Around the 10-Result Limit   

       52. The SOAP::Lite Perl Module   

       53. Plain Old XML, a SOAP::Lite Alternative   

       54. NoXML, Another SOAP::Lite Alternative   

       55. Programming the Google Web API with PHP   

       56. Programming the Google Web API with Java   

       57. Programming the Google Web API with Python   

       58. Programming the Google Web API with C# and .NET  

       59. Programming the Google Web API with VB.NET   

Chapter 6. Google Web API Applications  

       60. Date-Range Searching with a Client-Side Application  

       61. Adding a Little Google to Your Word   

       62. Permuting a Query   

       63. Tracking Result Counts over Time   

       64. Visualizing Google Results   

       65. Meandering Your Google Neighborhood   

       66. Running a Google Popularity Contest   

       67. Building a Google Box   

       68. Capturing a Moment in Time   

       69. Feeling Really Lucky   

       70. Gleaning Phonebook Stats   

       71. Performing Proximity Searches   

       72. Blending the Google and Amazon Web Services   

       73. Getting Random Results (On Purpose)   

       74. Restricting Searches to Top-Level Results   

       75. Searching for Special Characters   

       76. Digging Deeper into Sites   

       77. Summarizing Results by Domain   

       78. Scraping Yahoo! Buzz for a Google Search   

       79. Measuring Google Mindshare   

       80. Comparing Google Results with Those of Other Search Engines   

       81. SafeSearch Certifying URLs   

       82. Syndicating Google Search Results   

       83. Searching Google Topics   

       84. Finding the Largest Page   

       85. Instant Messaging Google   

Chapter 7. Google Pranks and Games  

       86. The No-Result Search (Prank)   

       87. Google Whacking   

       88. GooPoetry   

       89. Creating Google Art   

       90. Google Bounce   

       91. Google Mirror   

       92. Finding Recipes   

Chapter 8. The Webmaster Side of Google  

       93. A Webmaster's Introduction to Google   

       94. Generating Google AdWords   

       95. Inside the PageRank Algorithm   

       96. 26 Steps to 15K a Day   

       97. Being a Good Search Engine Citizen   

       98. Cleaning Up for a Google Visit   

       99. Getting the Most out of AdWords   

       100. Removing Your Materials from Google   

Index