Google Hacks 1st Edition

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.

A collection of 100 tips, tools, and scripts for power users of Google, this volume shows interesting ways to mine this popular search engine. Learn how build and modify scripts that can become custom business applications--each hack can be read in just a few minutes but can save hours of searching for the right answers.O'Reilly & Associates

Tara Calishain is the creator of the site, ResearchBuzz. She is an expert on Internet search engines and how they can be used effectively in business situations.

Rael Dornfest is a Researcher at the O'Reilly & Associates focusing on technologies just beyond the pale. He assesses, experiments, programs, and writes for the O'Reilly network and O'Reilly publications. Dornfest is Program Chair of the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference, Chair of the RSS-DEV Working Group, and developer of Meerkat: An Open Wire Service. In his copious free time, he develops bits and bobs of Open Source software and maintains his raelity bytes Weblog.

Dedication; Credits; About the Authors; Contributors; Acknowledgments; Foreword; Preface; Why Google Hacks?; How This Book Is Organized; How to Use This Book; Conventions Used in This Book; How to Contact Us; Chapter 1: Searching Google; 1.1 Hacks #1-28; 1.2 What Google Isn't; 1.3 What Google Is; 1.4 Google Basics; 1.5 The Special Syntaxes; 1.6 Advanced Search; 1.7 Setting Preferences; 1.8 Language Tools; 1.9 Anatomy of a Search Result; 1.10 Specialized Vocabularies: Slang and Terminology; 1.11 Getting Around the 10 Word Limit; 1.12 Word Order Matters; 1.13 Repetition Matters; 1.14 Mixing Syntaxes; 1.15 Hacking Google URLs; 1.16 Hacking Google Search Forms; 1.17 Date-Range Searching; 1.18 Understanding and Using Julian Dates; 1.19 Using Full-Word Wildcards; 1.20 inurl: Versus site:; 1.21 Checking Spelling; 1.22 Consulting the Dictionary; 1.23 Consulting the Phonebook; 1.24 Tracking Stocks; 1.25 Google Interface for Translators; 1.26 Searching Article Archives; 1.27 Finding Directories of Information; 1.28 Finding Technical Definitions; 1.29 Finding Weblog Commentary; 1.30 The Google Toolbar; 1.31 The Mozilla Google Toolbar; 1.32 The Quick Search Toolbar; 1.33 GAPIS; 1.34 Googling with Bookmarklets; Chapter 2: Google Special Services and Collections; 2.1 Hacks #29-35; 2.2 Google's Current Offerings; 2.3 Google Directory; 2.4 Google Groups; 2.5 Google Images; 2.6 Google News; 2.7 Google Catalogs; 2.8 Froogle; 2.9 Google Labs; Chapter 3: Third-Party Google Services; 3.1 Hacks #36-40; 3.2 Of Google, but Not Google; 3.3 Tinkering with the UI; 3.4 Expanding the Options with the Google API; 3.5 Thinking Way Outside the Box; 3.6 XooMLe: The Google API in Plain Old XML; 3.7 Google by Email; 3.8 Simplifying Google Groups URLs; 3.9 What Does Google Think Of...; 3.10 GooglePeople; Chapter 4: Non-API Google Applications; 4.1 Hacks #41-49; 4.2 Don't Try This at Home; 4.3 Building a Custom Date-Range Search Form; 4.4 Building Google Directory URLs; 4.5 Scraping Google Results; 4.6 Scraping Google AdWords; 4.7 Scraping Google Groups; 4.8 Scraping Google News; 4.9 Scraping Google Catalogs; 4.10 Scraping the Google Phonebook; Chapter 5: Introducing the Google Web API; 5.1 Hacks #50-59; 5.2 Why an API?; 5.3 Signing Up and Google's Terms; 5.4 The Google Web APIs Developer's Kit; 5.5 Using the Key in a Hack; 5.6 What's WSDL?; 5.7 Understanding the Google API Query; 5.8 Understanding the Google API Response; 5.9 Programming the Google Web API with Perl; 5.10 Looping Around the 10-Result Limit; 5.11 The SOAP::Lite Perl Module; 5.12 Plain Old XML, a SOAP::Lite Alternative; 5.13 NoXML, Another SOAP::Lite Alternative; 5.14 Programming the Google Web API with PHP; 5.15 Programming the Google Web API with Java; 5.16 Programming the Google Web API with Python; 5.17 Programming the Google Web API with C# and .NET; 5.18 Programming the Google Web API with VB.NET; Chapter 6: Google Web API Applications; 6.1 Hacks #60-85; 6.2 The Ingenuity of Millions; 6.3 Learning to Code; 6.4 What You'll Find Here; 6.5 Finding More Google API Applications; 6.6 The Possibilities Aren't Endless, but They're Expanding; 6.7 Date-Range Searching with a Client-Side Application; 6.8 Adding a Little Google to Your Word; 6.9 Permuting a Query; 6.10 Tracking Result Counts over Time; 6.11 Visualizing Google Results; 6.12 Meandering Your Google Neighborhood; 6.13 Running a Google Popularity Contest; 6.14 Building a Google Box; 6.15 Capturing a Moment in Time; 6.16 Feeling Really Lucky; 6.17 Gleaning Phonebook Stats; 6.18 Performing Proximity Searches; 6.19 Blending the Google and Amazon Web Services; 6.20 Getting Random Results (On Purpose); 6.21 Restricting Searches to Top-Level Results; 6.22 Searching for Special Characters; 6.23 Digging Deeper into Sites; 6.24 Summarizing Results by Domain; 6.25 Scraping Yahoo! Buzz for a Google Search; 6.26 Measuring Google Mindshare; 6.27 Comparing Google Results with Those of Other Search Engines; 6.28 SafeSearch Certifying URLs; 6.29 Syndicating Google Search Results; 6.30 Searching Google Topics; 6.31 Finding the Largest Page; 6.32 Instant Messaging Google; Chapter 7: Google Pranks and Games; 7.1 Hacks #86-92; 7.2 The No-Result Search (Prank); 7.3 Google Whacking; 7.4 GooPoetry; 7.5 Creating Google Art; 7.6 Google Bounce; 7.7 Google Mirror; 7.8 Finding Recipes; Chapter 8: The Webmaster Side of Google; 8.1 Hacks #93-100; 8.2 Google's Preeminence; 8.3 Google's Importance to Webmasters; 8.4 The Mysterious PageRank; 8.5 The Equally Mysterious Algorithm; 8.6 Google's Ad Programs; 8.7 Keeping Up with Google's Changes; 8.8 In a Word: Relax; 8.9 A Webmaster's Introduction to Google; 8.10 Generating Google AdWords; 8.11 Inside the PageRank Algorithm; 8.12 26 Steps to 15K a Day; 8.13 Being a Good Search Engine Citizen; 8.14 Cleaning Up for a Google Visit; 8.15 Getting the Most out of AdWords; 8.16 Removing Your Materials from Google; Colophon;