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Google Hacks
The book in brief Google Hacks by Tara Calishain and Rael Dornfest and published by O'Reilly will appeal to an even wider audience, I can imagine buying this for friends who haven't cottoned on to 'net searching at all and friends who complain "Google returns too many sites." People who are afraid to code shouldn't be put off by the "Hacks" in the title: O'Reilly have obviously taken a wider meaning of "hack" than just a neat piece of code. This book is a marvelous compendium of tips and tricks for Google, ranging from simple ways of getting the search results you want, through using Google's newer services such as phone books and image search, all the way to advanced ways of using scrapers and the Google API.
The book demonstrates 100 hacks, of which close to half are useful for everyone -- newbie, programmer and non-programmer alike. The first 35 hacks, in chapters one and two, will educate you about the intricacies of getting the best out of searching both Google's main web catalog and the newer 'Special Services and Collections.' This is the part of the book that should be essential reading for Google users -- in the two days I've had this book these have proved invaluable. The rest are for those who are either looking for extremely advanced search tips, increasing their web site's Google page rank, or programming an application to use the Google data -- all topics well covered in this volume.
What's Good In This Book
To start, it is well written, well laid out with a good contents section, good index, and some appropriate introductory material before getting down to the first hack. Each of the hacks are numbered and a single hack will often cross-reference other hacks that add information relevant to it. The hacks in each chapter nicely add on each other in both complexity and function.
The hacks themselves seem to cover every area of Google that you might want. They range from the downright frivolous (there is a chapter "Google Pranks and Games") to serious ways of improving your search results and excellent examples of good ways to use the Google API.
Most of the code fragments are in Perl, and among the hacks are ways of getting the job done without over extensive use of extra modules such as XML Parsers and SOAP::Lite (including a hack that uses regular expressions to parse the XML).
What's Bad In This Book
It's hard to find anything bad to say, apart from some frustration that a couple of the hacks that interested me used ASP or VB rather than a more portable language.
Oh, another minor quibble, the allied web site O'Reilly Hacks Series has been slow and has none of the code in the book or any of the URLs mentioned listed anywhere -- it seems more geared towards marketing the books than helping the readers.
(DISCLAIMER: I use Rael Dornfest's Blosxom blog software and have contributed a plugin for his software.)
You can purchase Google Hacks from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
As usual, links to pictures will be posted.
post muah ha ha ha btw.. isn't this a repost?
...to be ontopic, you'll have to tell us how to find them in the Google cache using no more than one search term.
...misuses of the Google API could lead to them not allowing open access to it anymore, which would deny access to useful tools to proper users.
make sure you're using this Google...
...just another one of those "how to search the internet" guides that you see about once a year in all the internet magazines?
You mean to tell me someone wrote a book that can give better options than "+" and "-"?
Nice... see you at bn.com!
100% Insightful
some frustration that a couple of the hacks that interested me used ASP or VB
Anyone can learn VB. You don't even have to be a programmer. There are 4 million VB programmers out there that prove my point!
Spread the RC luvin'
As if searching for pr0n wasn't easy enough...
Business \Busi"ness\, n.;
A scam in which all people involved perceive as beneficial...
BTW - google has a new pricewatch service, froogle.google.com. It doesn't sort by price, but you can lower the upper-bound price limit.
Looks like an interesting book, I will look out for it. The 'power' of google is not particularly touched on in everyday use at all.
[...] excellent examples of good ways to use the Google API. [...]
I had never heard of a Google API, so I did a search on Google (hah), and found this. You can use it in your software as a nice little feature. Would it be nice to have a google search option in the help section of your next software project? I like that idea.
Note to self: get smarter troll to guard door.
Would you like to touch my monkey? It's shaped just like your buddy michael, but with less hair.
... remove bad moderators from the M1 eligibility pool."
I'm a cop, you idiot!
BANG! BANG! BANG!
I've seen several posts recently where people complain about having "infinite" Meta-Mod points. Almost like it's a burden.
It most certainly is not. It is a gift to patient, karma-whoring trolls. Read the Meta-Mod FAQ.
Say you encounter a typical "OMG BILL GATES IS TEH SATAN!" post by, say, circletimessquare. It's been duly modded up as "Insightful" by some unknown editor or slashbot. Why not Meta-Mod that as "unfair"? Sure, you won't have any significant effect on either the poster's karma or the person who modded them up, but you will "help
Similarly, suppose you encounter a post by a troll seething with racism and hatred. It's been duly modded down as "Troll" or "Flamebait". This too is "unfair"! That post increased the noise, and as such was very valuable. It belongs in +2 territory with something by Perens, surely! Whoever modded that down should be removed from the moderation eligibility pool, post haste!
(Note that you don't have to support the racist shite in the post. The poster probably doesn't either; he's just doing it for the reaction.)
This is the same thing that happens to positive-karma troll accounts when they upmod a troll. They're found out in Meta-Mod, and lose their ability to moderate.
It's time the trolls use the same weapons as the slashbots! If you moderate, use "-1 Overrated" since those don't get Meta-Modded. And Meta-Mod whenever you get the chance! I mark almost everything as "unfair", though I occasionally see a very obvious troll being upmodded, which I mark as "fair" or leave alone.
Either that, or just have fun. Whichever.
Edit I've recently realized that my alter ego and I make up a fifth of $$$$$exyGal's foes. I am beaming with pride. Almost as much pride as nabbing 5,000,001st post, or having my sordid past with michael crapflooded by SexualAssPussy.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
--- Jason Olshefsky
Karma: Poser (mostly affected by adding this line long after everyone else did)
yeeha!! F0RST POAST! yippie!! all you suX0r. I roX0r. I am so l33+! why? Forst poast! live with it!
I'll check this one out. Is there an O'Reilly book that isn't useful or somewhat entertaining? Thier hacking series is top notch in my book.
Visit www.seriouslythough.com
i'd like to slip my ultrawide cock into a young girl's anal channel. it feels soooo good to butt-fuck a tight young female asshole. i'm cumming right now just thinking about it.
are falling. how do you feel about that
1. Take GOOGLE FOR DUMMIES. 2. Retitle it, adding a geek word (such as, oh, say, "hacks"). 3. Profit! No "?" step here.
Go to Google.com.
Type in the search terms, "French military victories".
Click "I'm feeling Lucky".
Enjoy.
Doesn't this book defeat the very purpose of google ?
I don't know about all you guys, but google preety much comes up with what i want in the first of second search page.
Most of the time i don't even have to use +, - , "". I think thats the good thing about google. Its ability to come up with the most relevant sites.
for the last time people, I am "frodo from middle eaRTH", not "middle eaST".
Just heard on talk radio Paul Stojanovich slipped while stopping to pose for a picture, falling off a cliff into the Pacific ocean. Whether or not you've watched any of his insightful television programmes, you can't doubt his contributions to American culture. Truly an American icon.
Google for:
"Index +of" $filename
The quotation marks are relavent.
VIETNAM 2 PREFLIGHT CHECK
1. Cabal of oldsters who won't listen to outside advice? Check.
2. No understanding of ethnicities of the many locals? Check.
3. Imposing country boundaries drawn in Europe, not by the locals? Check.
4. Unshakeable faith in our superior technology? Check.
5. France secretly hoping we fall on our asses? Check.
6. Russia secretly hoping we fall on our asses? Check.
7. China secretly hoping we fall on our asses? Check.
8. SecDef pushing a conflict the JCS never wanted? Check.
9. Fear we'll look bad if we back down now? Check.
10. Corrupt Texan in the WH? Check.
11. Land war in Asia? Check.
12. Right unhappy with outcome of previous war? Check.
13. Enemy easily moves in/out of neighboring countries? Check.
14. Soldiers about to be dosed with *our own* chemicals? Check.
15. Friendly fire problem ignored instead of solved? Check.
16. Anti-Americanism up sharply in Europe? Check.
17. B-52 bombers? Check.
18. Helicopters that clog up on the local dust? Check.
19. In-fighting among the branches of the military? Check.
20. Locals that cheer us by day, hate us by night? Check.
21. Local experts ignored? Check.
22. Local politicians ignored? Check.
23. Locals used to conflicts lasting longer than the USA has been a country? Check.
24. Against advice, Prez won't raise taxes to pay for war? Check.
25. Blue water navy ships operating in brown water? Check.
26. Use of nukes hinted at if things don't go our way? Check.
27. Unpopular war? Check.
Get Your Unilateral War On Iraq On
Linux and Red Communism .. in co-hoots? Richard Stallman has an axe to grind with his fellow academic types so he takes up communism? Where did you say Finland is? North EASTern Europe right by the old USSR?
.. except for charging for Help Desk service. Should profit arise for a group from selling a distro it wouldn't be *too* long before they'd be undercut by another group making a near carbon copy and selling for less. Might as well just give the software away for all the money you can make from it. But such is the Linux world ..
.. faster .. stable .. documented APIs .. and works.
Is it any wonder (Red) China is adopting Linux?
Maybe you have the godless freedom hating no-free-speech mandatory abortion Tibetan monk butchering red communism mozilla Red Star built into your distro too? So many distros do. Go ahead, approve of atrocities and terrorism by sporting the GNU/Red Star.
The GNU/Linux platform and other OSS projects basically straight jacket the coders into a non-profit communal coding formula that while' free' is also almost incapable of making a profit for the programmer
Instead, try Windows Xp or buy a Mac
I think a book like this has been due for awhile now. Google has more features than even they probably know about, but thankfully they don't try to cram them all into blocks all over the page. When you go to www.google.com you get a very accessible, very simple, yet still powerful site. Many people I know use nothing but the default google search, because it gets the job done. I can find out whatever I want about Linux from a basic google search. I can usually find it easier, however, with www.google.com/linux. I only head about it form word of mouth, I had never actually lookd for it. New services and tools are being added all the time, and I mean all the time :) check here to see some of the new and upcoming features. I think most of you would be suprised to find out all the ways google can make your life easier aside from just by being the best damned web search engine.
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. It's just that yours is stupid.
Google gives fine results as it is. For, say, researchers, it doesn't take that long to learn to type '"Sex on the beach" -"alcoholic drink"' at the prompt. Who want to turn Google into a cool toy, besides an incredible dork? I'm talking, even compared to normal Slashdot activities.
If somebody bought this for me, I would return it for a real book, and make a mental note to find new friends.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
You are a hippie dumbfuck? Check.
Kudos for a best first post ever.
At first I thought this story was a duplicate as usual. Amazingly enough, that wasn't the case, but Slashdot did run another story on Google hacks a week or so ago.
It was Slashdotted to hell back then, so I never got to see what it was about. Maybe this time I should check it out before pressing Submit?
"If you think education is expensive, try ignorance" - Derek Bok
Can someone scan the book and put it in their Kazaa Shared Folder please? Thanks.
Some of them are quite fun to muck around with.
This is NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT "+3 Informative" by ANY FUCKING STANDARDS IMAGINABLE!
I mean, seriously! In what way does this post provide informational content? It informs us that "dubbayu d 40" thinks "they'll make $$$" and THAT'S IT! IT'S JUST NOT VERY INFORMATIVE!
I think I'm going to bry.
This story explains how that works and who's behind it.
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
can't all this be found in the on-site google documentation? it's not exactly hard to perfect the science for the correct usage of +, -, "" and so on.
Let's see here: Froogle! Ooh! The 5th result lists the book for $12.50. But then when I actually click on the link it's $15.50! Damn you, Froogle!
I'm sure if I had the book it would tell me how to hack Froogle into getting a lower price for the book. But then I'd already have the book...
Escape Pod Films: Sketch Comedy and Web Series
Check out the download size of the Google API samples file...
Better read *all* the fine print in the EULA, son.
The neutrality of this sig is disputed.
This is available on the Safari website for those that have subscriptions, which is nice because it's not a very long book. I was able to read most of it in a day, and I would have felt a little robbed had I bought it, but just checking it out gave me enough time to read what I wanted.
Free Online Woodworking Resources Directory
You need a license key to unlock the searches, which is limited to 1000 searches a day. This is fine for yourself, but if you distribute the software to 1000 people, they can only do one search each a day (or one person does 1000 searches and everyone else gets pissed off)
Oh and BTW, given the storys about the amount of personal data being cached by google every time you search, does anyone now what app/computer specific data the api's are sending back along with the query?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
For those safari.oreilly.com subscribers, you can add this book to your bookshelf...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
www.google-watch.org
You can also read Rael Dornfest's blog. He is the author of the very cool blosxom app.
If you tweak around with the URL, you can get Google News to display the navigation bar on top (it's better that way, IMHO).
Karma: Excellent (fuck, even in the future moderation doesn't work!)
Damn. Mods are hitting the pipe again.
Oh, another minor quibble, the allied web site O'Reilly Hacks Series has been slow
Which is why we are posting it on Slashdot, hoping that a bigger hammer will fix the problem
my sig
must...read...and...type...faster!
googleDorks
Link Here for last weeks story
Uh - anyone who posts new stories ever read the old (err - 1 week old) stories????
Is a way to do complex boolean queries on Google:
(baquaspa or "baqua spa" or "baquacil") and (plastics or warranty) and bromine
Stemming would also be nice.
are specifically excluded in the Google documentation: To provide the most accurate results, Google does not use "stemming" or support "wildcard" searches. The effect in the above comment with 'how to * a cat' is because the * is ignored. From http://www.google.com/help/basics.html
My Journal.
Haven't we had enough Google cocksuckery here? This is about the millionth article on Slashdot about that shitty little search engine. Surely there are more important topics than this to dicuss!
I'll be sure to buy a copy.
http://www.pinkfloydonline.com
Or, you can get the book here for 15.50.
It's not a user's guide, it's more like "Unix Power Tools". I bet they'd have called it "Google Power Tools" if it weren't for the fact that they're trying to position it into their "Hacks" series.
I think it looks pretty good, and I'm definitely going to check it out next time I'm at the store.
"First you gotta do the truffle shuffle."
That's so great, that you feel comfortable enough with the Internet to share the most useless and pathetic information in your life.
Can you post tomorrow how many times you went the washroom, or any brilliant insights to "Friends"?
Thank you,
The Pope
Why assume that it doesn't do that? Just because you don't know how?
Here is the advanced help page describing the search syntax you desire (plus others).
And because you have shown yourself to be lazy.. here is the syntax (linked even!) so you can try your above query on Google.
(baquaspa OR "baqua spa" OR "baquacil") (plastics OR warranty) bromine
On Google the AND is implied.. and you must capitalize your ORs.
Enjoy.
It's obvious that this user is looking for highly toxic and explosive substances. That knowledge could be used for disastrous results.
/.ers to mod this parent down and to ensure that our national security remains intact!
I call on my fellow
"how to [bathe|eat] a cat"
Why assume that it doesn't do that? Just because you don't know how?
No, because it never used to, and because the help text still doesn't mention that it can.
Here is the advanced help page [google.com] describing the search syntax you desire (plus others).
Gee, if only I had looked at the help text, I would have clearly seen that it supports parenthetical nesting of terms.
Oh. Wait. It doesn't say that it does. (And last time I tried anyway, it didn't. Granted, I should have tried again today before posting.)
I recall a time when O'Reilly published excellent books on interesting technical subjects. They weren't neccesarily definitive works but they were well researched, well written, often a good deal lighter and smaller and easier to cart around in your backpack than hardcover bound gazillion page epics and they had those neat little pictures, which I suppose they still have, of bunnies and tigers and camels and such.
Now there are about 75 billion titles. Underwater Basket Weaving in XML. Genital Hygene with .NET. See Spot Run and write a Perl script. The Love That Dare Not Speak It's Name While Hacking Some Awesome DHTML Tricks With Javascript And Then Going To The Toilet, though not in a rude way, how lucky you English are to find the toilet such a source of amusement, for us it is strictly functional.
If O'Reilly was a pet it would be like a stinky old dog that isn't cute anymore and it's blind in one eye and has fleas and pees when it's excited.
Now wash your hands.
Well, in order to use the API you need to register, and you can only run a few hundred queries a day. If you want to run a site that links to it, you'll need to pay.
I'm sure this is something they've already thought of, and can prevent.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Hahaha... It's rare that you actually laugh out loud at funny mods...
"It's hard to find anything bad to say, apart from some frustration that a couple of the hacks that interested me used ASP or VB rather than a more portable language."
Oh my freaking God! Cry me a river! If you are not a good enough programmer to port code from ASP/VB then you don't know what a "more portable" language is.
You may be a coprophiliac, but you presumeably mean coprophage?
or how dr.seuss would write 4 the internet generation;-)
If you had read the TOC, you would realize that there are some very interesting undocumented hacks, such as superceding the 10-keyword search limitation.
You quitting proves that the karma kap worked. The most annoying of the whores shut up. --CmdrTaco
Google treats parentheses the same way as it treats most other special characters - it ignores them.
The Google "OR" operator has precedence over the implied "and". There is no way to represent the boolean expression "(A and B) or C" on Google.
Try this query on Google: (platipus psoriasis) OR byzantium.
The number of hits should be a hint.
Please do your homework before calling somebody else "lazy".
try this..t ml
http://mywood.kicks-ass.org/thecore/googleproxy.h
try using http://whatismyip.com