Effective Googling!

Hardik Thakkar
CMED
Infosys Technologies

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How Old is Google?

 Answer: 9 years (10 on September 7, 2008)

 In September of 1998, Google Inc. opened its
door in Menlo Park, CA.
http://www.google.com/intl/en/corporate/history.html#1995)

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More About Google

 “Google” is a play on the word “googol” which

is the mathematical term for 1 followed by
100 zeros and “…reflects the company's
mission to organize the immense, seemingly
infinite amount of information available on the
web.”

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 A Unique Company
Google founders

Larry Page Sergey Brin

Number of employees:
Worldwide, Google employed 10,000 full-time employees as of now

Work Environment:
Informal: Lava lamps, door on sawhorses as desks, exercise balls for chairs, and dogs roaming
the halls…

Google:
• The interface is clear and simple.
• Pages load instantly.
• Placement in search results is never sold to anyone.
• Advertising on the site must offer relevant content and not be a distraction.
• No pop-up ads allowed.
Source: http://www.google.com/intl/en/corporate/tenthings.html

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Why do we love Google?
 Size and scope: Now indexing over 20
billion web pages (conservative estimate).
 Relevance of Results: PageRank
 Diversity of Search: Image, News, Book
Search, Scholar, Blog Search, Finance,
Froogle, Video . . . and much, much more.
 Other Tools: Google Maps, Picasa, Blogger,
Gmail, Calendar, Docs & Spreadsheets . . .

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But…
 We may love Google, but few users know
how to use full search capabilities.

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Effective Googling
 How does Google interpret basic search?
 Google places “AND” operator between all
search terms entered in basic search box.
 Automatically searches for some plural/singular
and grammatical variants.

 You enter: news reader

 Google searches: news AND reader OR readers

 Does not search as exact phrase unless quotes

present!
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Need Exact Phrase? Use quotation marks!
“infosys billion dollar”

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Expand Search With Synonym? Use a “tilde”
e.g.: “~infosys” finds IT companies similar to Infosys

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Search by filetype (pdf, ppt, xls, doc)
e.g.: “.Net Framework” filetype:ppt

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Negative Search Terms
e.g.: “nano –car” will return the results with word ‘nano’ but not Tata
Nano car

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Limit your search results to a particular web site
e.g.: “sparsh site:infosys.com” will get the pages from infosys.com
where the word ‘sparsh’ is referred `

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Search for sites that link to a particular website:
e.g.: “link:infosys.com”

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You’ve found a useful website & want to find other
sites like it:
e.g.: “related:www.infosys.com”

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Google is a Dictionary
Find definition of a word or a phrase?
e.g.: define: scruples

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Google is a Calculator as well 

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Google is Converter too..!
Convert currency, units and a lot more

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 More Search Operators

 allinanchor:
 allintext:
 allintitle:
 allinurl:
 cache:
 group:
 info:
 time
 weather

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Use Specialty Search Functions

 Google News: news.google.com

 Google Images: images.google.com
 Google Blog Search: blogsearch.google.com
 Google Finance: finance.google.com
 Google Scholar: scholar.google.com
 Google Book Search: books.google.com

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Google News Alerts
 Tracking an event in the news?
 Create your own Google News alert – it’s
free!
 Can choose to monitor latest developments
on web pages, blogs, Google news, Google
discussion group pages, or all of these
sources.

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Google Scholar
 Covers: law, medicine, social sciences, arts,
humanities, business, & finance.
 Included items: peer-reviewed papers,
theses, book excerpts, abstracts & full-text
articles
 Sources for items: academic publisher web
pages, professional societies, preprint
repositories, universities, & other scholarly
organizations.
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Google Book Search
 Searches full text of indexed books.
 If work is in public domain, full contents
usually available.
 If not, users can view bibliographic info
(author, title, publisher) and perhaps some
excerpts.
 Library partners: UC, Princeton, Stanford,
Univ. of Michigan, Univ. of Texas, Oxford,
UVA, Univ. of Wisconsin, ……
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Something exciting at last
 Localized search
 Movie search
 Code search

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local.google.co.in
Effective localized search solution

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google.co.in/movies
Find theatres running your desired movies in your city..wow

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google.com/
codesearch
search public source
code

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Google hack for finding movies/music
(warning: Not to be tried at office but home…!)
e.g.: intitle:”index.of”(mp3|mp4|avi|dat|mpeg) mummy
Interesting stuff

 Google Docs
 Google Calendar
 Google Reader
 Google Gear
 Google App Engine
 Google Sites
 Google Sets
 Google Trends and so on…
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PageRank
 PageRank explained by Google:
 Google interprets a link on page A going to
page B as a vote -- by page A, for page B.
Google looks at more than the sheer volume
of votes, or links a page receives; it also
analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes
cast by pages that are themselves
"important" weigh more heavily.

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