Google Power Search

Behind Google's deceptively simple interface is immense power for both market and competitive research—if you know how to use it well. Sure, basic searches are easy, but complex searches require specialized skills. This concise book takes you through the full range of Google's powerful search-refinement features, so you can quickly find the specific information you need. Learn techniques ranging from simple Boolean logic to URL parameters and other advanced tools, and see how they're applied to real-world market research examples. Incorporate advanced search operators such as filetype:, intitle:, daterange:, and others into your queries Use Google filtering tools, including Search Within Results, Similar Pages, and SafeSearch, among others Explore the breadth of Google through auxiliary search services like Google News, Google Books, Google Blog Search, and Google Scholar Acquire advanced Google skills that result in more effective search engine optimization (SEO)

Behind Google's deceptively simple interface is immense power for both market and competitive research—if you know how to use it well. Sure, basic searches are easy, but complex searches require specialized skills. This concise book takes you through the full range of Google's powerful search-refinement features, so you can quickly find the specific information you need. Learn techniques ranging from simple Boolean logic to URL parameters and other advanced tools, and see how they're applied to real-world market research examples. Incorporate advanced search operators such as filetype:, intitle:, daterange:, and others into your queries Use Google filtering tools, including Search Within Results, Similar Pages, and SafeSearch, among others Explore the breadth of Google through auxiliary search services like Google News, Google Books, Google Blog Search, and Google Scholar Acquire advanced Google skills that result in more effective search engine optimization (SEO)

Imagine what would happen to your productivity if your most challenging Web searches never failed, and your ordinary Web searches more quickly returned the most relevant results. Over the course of a year, efficient searches and relevant results could add up to days of recovered time. In this book, I'll show you how to start saving time by mastering all aspects of the Google search engine and its dozens of related services and technologies. I'll help you understand how Google processes your query as a set of keywords, phrases, or natural-language questions; and I'll teach you how to use lesser-known search tools, operators, and hidden features to filter and refine broad result sets. No matter how well you know Google, I guarantee you'll learn something new in Google Power Search, Third Edition.

Learn advanced techniques for maximizing the Google search engine and extract the best content from Google without having to learn complicated code. Go under the hood and learn a wide range of advanced web search techniques through practical examples. This is an ideal resource for students, librarians, journalists, researchers, businesspeople, lawyers, investigators, and anyone interested in conducting an in-depth search.

How to be a great online searcher, demonstrated with step-by-step searches for answers to a series of intriguing questions (for example, “Is that plant poisonous?”). We all know how to look up something online by typing words into a search engine. We do this so often that we have made the most famous search engine a verb: we Google it—“Japan population” or “Nobel Peace Prize” or “poison ivy” or whatever we want to know. But knowing how to Google something doesn't make us search experts; there's much more we can do to access the massive collective knowledge available online. In The Joy of Search, Daniel Russell shows us how to be great online researchers. We don't have to be computer geeks or a scholar searching out obscure facts; we just need to know some basic methods. Russell demonstrates these methods with step-by-step searches for answers to a series of intriguing questions—from “what is the wrong side of a towel?” to “what is the most likely way you will die?” Along the way, readers will discover essential tools for effective online searches—and learn some fascinating facts and interesting stories. Russell explains how to frame search queries so they will yield information and describes the best ways to use such resources as Google Earth, Google Scholar, Wikipedia, and Wikimedia. He shows when to put search terms in double quotes, how to use the operator (*), why metadata is important, and how to triangulate information from multiple sources. By the end of this engaging journey of discovering, readers will have the definitive answer to why the best online searches involve more than typing a few words into Google.

"Adding functionality to your Google Apps"--Cover.