Gets Serious


Presented for 
InfoToday 2002 
by
Ran Hock , Online Strategies
If people in your organization could benefit from a professionally prepared and presented seminar or workshop on using the Internet most effectively, click here ,


Images

    Google now has the largest image searching database on the Web, retrieving multiples of the numbers of hits found by AllTheWeb and leaving AltaVista's image search far in the dust.   To get to it, use the "Images" tab above the search box on Google's main page. Search functionality is fairly extensive in the Advanced Image Search option (look for this link on the image search page).  There you can apply simple Boolean and specify image size, file type, coloration, and domains.  You can also apply an adult content filter. Results pages display up to 100 thumbnails.  Clicking on the thumbnails takes you to the actual site, but in a Google frame (which can be removed by a link at the top of the page). You are also shown a larger thumbnail, usually with a link to go to the full-size image (if not already shown.)
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 


25 million PDF files (plus WORD, Excel, etc.)

PDF (Adobe Portable Document Format) Files on Google. Formerly, this type of file was pretty strictly a part of the "invisible Web,"  and not identifiable or retrievable by general Web search engines. Google now makes over 26 million of these files accessible

      In Google results pages, you will recognize these by [PDF] in the file names.

            [PDF] www.marketdirect.org/gdf2000/iran.pdf

To limit your search to just PDF, use filetype:pdf as part of your query.  Clicking on the main link in results records will cause your Acrobat Reader to appear, with the PDF file.  Clicking on the "Text version" link will display a text version in your regular browser window.

Example

Google is now doing the same for Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Rich Text (rtf) and PostScript files, but they are very small in number at present (e.g., ca 1 million Word files, 250,000 Excel files) . Example
 
 
 
 


Newsgroups

Google's newsgroup search is now available directly from its homepage.   For those who don't already know, Google took over the defunct deja.com database and quickly got it up and going.  Google rapidly added enhancements and now has all or virtually all of the functionality of the old deja.com -- plus an easier interface since deja.com had, during its last couple years pretty well obscured the newsgroup search in favor of an obviously unsuccessful shopping-oriented homepage, leading to its decline (Sic semper stupidity.)   Google now contains the entire 20 year archive, with 700 million postings

The groups are:

Google Groups is now THE way to search newsgroups.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 


Translation


 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Phone Book Lookup

A phone book lookup (US )can now be done on Google, directly from the search box.

      For a business, type a business name and either city and state or zip code.
      For individuals , give the first name or initial, the last name, and either state, area code or zip.  It will also work without either the first name or initial.

You can also do a reverse lookup by entering the phone number.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 


Street Maps

As with phone numbers, put a US address in the search box and you will get a link to a map (from Yahoo! Maps and/or MapQuest)
 
 


 

News
 

Go to news.google.com and search a broad range of news sources, updated continually


 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Dictionary Definitions

Look on the line that reports your results and you will probably see your search terms underlined .
Click on an underlined term and it will take you to a dictionary definition  (or gazetteer listing) from yourdictionary.com
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 


Stock Quotes

A ticker symbol in the search box will produce not just a search, but a link to stock quotes (and headlines) from Yahoo Finance section.