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Last updated 3/07/2006

Google Hacks

Google Hacks 100 Industrial-Strength Tips & Tools
Author: Tara Calishain & Rael Dornfest
Publisher: O'Reilly
330 pages $24.95

Google Hacks 100 Industrial-Strength Tips & Toolsstarts with Google basics that should interest and be helpful to anyone who uses Google to search the Internet. The casual Mac Safari user who uses the toolbar Google option to find things on the web may find these pages interesting. People who do more Google searching and those who research information as part of their business may find that the first few pages justify the cost. But, this book is really intended for advanced users who will understand the hacks.

O'Reilly is publishing a new Hacks Series of books written by experts for intelligent, advanced users. There have been annual Mac Hack meetings for many years, and the results were available on CD's, but those hacks were not intended to be useful and these are. One of the motives in publishing this series is to restore the image of hacks as neat things. Another is obviously to inform, entertain, and amaze, and it does that very well.

Here are three interesting basic bits from the book:

  • The name Google comes from the word Googol which means 1 followed by 100 zeros. Google searches over 3 billion pages of constantly shifting data.
  • Google does Boolean searches. If you search for Hartley James Jackson you will get only pages that contain all three Hartley, James, and Jackson. If you search for Hartley OR James OR Jackson you would get a listing of pages containing any one of the three Hartley, James or Jackson as long as it did not exceed the limit of maybe 600 pages. You can also search for Hartley (James or Jackson) to get all pages with Hartley and either James or Jackson, or for "Hartley Jackson" which contains that phrase.
  • If you want telephone numbers you might search a Google collection phonebook: Hartley Jackson VT, or a reverse search from the telephone number phonebook (802) 626-8123.

But Google is written for much more advanced and technically able users. For example:

  • I do not know anything about programming the API except that the book says API means Application Programming Interface.
  • There are a lot of hacks in the book to do amazing things to find the information you are searching for using languages like Perl.

    • For more information about the book, including Table of Contents, index, author bios, and samples see:
    http://www.oreilly.com