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New Google Toolbar Brings Browse By Name
Philipp Lenssen writes "The newest release of the Google Toolbar (Internet Explorer only) comes with a Browse by Name feature. It lets you enter keywords in the browser address bar, and when Google decides this is a sure bet you will be directly forwarded to the right page. Is this the return of Internet Keywords?"
Firefox has the exact same feature only it uses the address bar. Type "Microsoft Home Page" and get the MS home page. For the example above, it takes you to an IE SP1 download page hosted by download.com, which is also pretty funny and accurate.
"It lets you enter keywords in the browser address bar, and when Google decides this is a sure bet you will be directly forwarded to the right page."
Google hacking will be really damn funny. Just imagine, say, for 6 months, people get used to typing 'update windows' in their address bar. Then, some google hacker figures out a way to suddenly spike the value of some other site somehow to include 'update windows' as the first choice. Hopefully not to goatse.
other fun things to do with google
Unfortunately, if you enter a single word, it does not check to see if it can resolve the name on your Intranet first. Instead, it immediately does the "Browse By Name."
This caused a lot of issues on our Intranet. Just warning everyone.
RomSteady - I came, I saw, I tested. GamerTag: RomSteady / http://www.romsteady.net
This is very insightful, for the first two paragraphs. Then it just goes downhill.
Best thing about this is if you edit SearchURLList.plist, you can include any search engine you like in the search engine list. I think any Mozilla browser will work this way, and there are third party tools for Safari that allow the same thing. I click the search field and I can choose whether to send my search query to Amazon, Google, Wikipedia, Dictionary.com, eBay, Erowid, whatever! Much more useful in my opinion than an "I feel lucky" button.
Looks like some else already patented this concept: http://www.delphion.com/details?pn=US06101537__
"A universal electronic resource denotation, request and delivery system allows a user to locate information on a distributed computer system or network such as the Internet by knowing or guessing a short mnemonic alias of an electronic resource without the user having to know the physical or other location denotation such as the universal resource locator (URL) of the desired resource."
If that's the case, this will only serve to inflame the domain war disputes. Does Visa have more of a point about registering Visa.com if Google won't even display the credit card company on a search for "Visa"?
Oddly enough, typing "visa" went to a standard search results page when I tried it just now. Of course visa.com was the first link displayed (aside from the links promoting google's news service), but still that's interesting. I wonder what the actual mechanism is.
Try "waffles." I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.
Support the First Amendment. Read at -1
In fact, Microsoft has already clearly won the browser war. Even with the advent of Firefox, it still holds ~85 of the browser market. The good thing about them losing around 10% market share to *zilla and derivatives is that it has made MS reform the IE development team who now have a chance to catch up (download manager, better standards support, skins etc etc).
For better or worse, I don't see the Microsoft market share slipping massively (whatever massively means) until they either stop shipping IE with Windows (not going to happen) or Linux rules the desktop (not going to happen any time soon).
Never, ever lose a file again. Ever.
Options > More > under "Extra search Buttons" > select "I'm feeling lucky"
I don't use that one but I use the "search this site" feature all the time.
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
Firefox has had this for a while. Anyone running firefox (I'm running 0.9.3) type "New York Times" in the url bar and hit enter, it puts you at www.nytimes.com. It just takes you to the I'm Feeling lucky link, but it comes in handy.
Regards,
Steve
I am curious about the impact on commerce sites who currently use search engine rankings as part of their overall marketing mix.
Why would a search for "Harman Kardon" take me to HarmanKardon.com instead of showing me the Top 10 results which might include discount resellers of Harmon Kardon products? Instead, I, the websurfer, now must wade through informational content and somehow find my way to resellers officially listed at the HK site.
Why would a search for "Grand Canyon" *not* take me to GrandCanyon.com?
If I type in "tshirts" or "cheap tshirts" what would I get (i.e., how it is determined what the "real" website is for a given keyword/phrase)?
I could go on and on, but surely it is readily apparent, if adopted en masse and if keywords/phrases are increasingly populated with a single response, the results could be highly disadvantageous to a wide range of commercial websites (and information sites, for that matter). Many changes at Google have already had the side effect of destabilizing some small businesses who previously relied on (ethical) search engine marketing as a major component of their commerce exchanges (and the many customers who were thankful to have found that commercial site).
Those magically blessed by Google, through a process we do not understand, will be the rare few who benefit.
(In some small way, it reminds me of Microsoft whereby they have all the answer [singular] you need. And only their official channel benefits. Because the mass of people are not Slashdotters who understand how to use a wide variety of tools for a wide variety of purposes. Instead, the masses are funneled through a pre-determined strainer.)
Finally, is there some kind of legal liability if Google directs searches for (something like) "Britney Spears" to the wrong site? Or, perhaps, if they have the technology in place to point it to the right site, but instead show raw search results none of which contain the official site? It seems to me that its a bit problematic to be the One and Great Arbiter of what's the single correct response to a query.
Contrary to some other posts, this type of 'technology' (whether in FireFox or in a Google ToolBar or AOL Keyword) is *very* newsworthy in that it can change the landscape for a wide number of commerical (and non-commerical) website traffic.
How about adding a "trademark-domain" namespace scheme to Google, like "tm:music-distribution:apple", that finds only pages about Apple records, and not Apple Computers, using the existing trademark system?
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make install -not war
It's called "Local Names," and it allows you to use short names for URLs.
The idea is that you should be able to use short names in:
We can presently use LocalNames in most wiki (any wiki that supports InterLinks,) in WordPress blogs, and in Firefox browsers.
The LocalNames spec doesn't describe what linking syntax should look like, but it'd generally be something like this: [[short name of URL][long text to link.]] So for example, you might write:
Which would render out as:
The names lists support defaulting, so that you don't have to name every URL you like. If someone makes a names list you like, (for example, the contents of a wiki,) you can just default to it.
There is already: a site for keeping your own names list, a web-browser redirection site, and a site for adapting a Wiki's title index into a Local Names list.
Python programmers may be interested in the Python library reference names, which you can use with FireFox to jump straight to any Python module's documentation.
Bloggers may be interested in MooKitty's plug-in for WordPress that lets you use LocalNames in blog posts.
Really, I get a little upset now when I have to look up URL's mid-post. I think, "Geeze, I've got the LocalName for this right on the tip of my tongue; Why do I have to actually resolve it to a URL myself, and then stick a href tags around it?"
Once you start using short names for stuff, you never want to go back.
It's interesting that Jimmy Carter and Michael Moore round out the top three after Gearge W. Bush. It's also interesting that that search brings up an ad link from google for a site selling anti-Bush paraphernalia.
big deal. firefox is doing this already. type keyword in the address bar, & it directly takes you to a page, mostly harmless ;).
- Sogudi allows to do almost the same thing with safari, though it is a bit different. :
For example
goo monkeys : will search google for monkeys
goo site:monkeys : will search the current site on google for monkeys
babfr www.yahoo.fr : will translate yahoo.fr from French to English using babelfish, etc.
All of this configurable, of course.
- Acid Search enhances the Safari's google search button, by adding a drop menu, so you can have more search engines, including Google's "I'm Feeling Lucky" feature.
Alexis 'jeriqo' BRET
I really like this feature and tend to use this quite often, especially for keywords that I already know the result for. So, when it's used in this way, the feature almost replaces DNS as a way to look up internet sites. It doesn't replace all features of DNS, mainly because the lookup won't always return the same result, ie, a site can't *own* an "I'm Feeling Lucky" keyword. But for most browsing purposes, I can see DNS being phased out in favour of these "softer" lookup mechanisms.
The google toolbar is IE only, it attempts to implement missing features into IE that firefox already has.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
1. Type a keyword (or several) into the google toolbar
2. hit alt-enter (shortcut to feeling lucky)
I've experimented with this method and the newer one and I find the older one to be much more useful. The new method is less apt to give you a wrong page, but the old method turns out to be outstandingly accurate.
The newer method never works with obscure websites, but the other one does very frequently. Try "cgnet" by both methods, for example.
Another advantage to the alt-enter method is that you can get to the right internal links in one click. Try "ford explorer" both ways.
BTW, the newer feature has been available since v2.0.113 (2004-07-30), so it's not exactly news.