Google Power: Unleash the Full Potential of Google (Paperback)

by Chris Sherman (Author) "Search engines are magical machines..." (more)
Key Phrases: Google News, Groups News, Internet Explorer (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
Learn advanced techniques for maximizing the Google search engine and extract the best content from Google without having to learn complicated code. Go under the hood and learn a wide range of advanced web search techniques through practical examples. This is an ideal resource for students, librarians, journalists, researchers, businesspeople, lawyers, investigators, and anyone interested in conducting an in-depth search.

From the Back Cover

Get the most out of your Google searches and find the exact information you need with help from this hands-on guide. Google Power: Unleash the Full Potential of Google takes you under the hood of the ultimate search engine and shows you how to turbo charge your Google searching for maximum results. In the first part of the book, you’ll find out how to access the wide array of power tools that are hidden beneath the surface of Google’s clean, simple interface. Then you’ll get hundreds of proven tips and techniques that will dramatically improve your searching--no matter what you’re looking for.

• Customize Google for your own power searching needs
• Master the art of Googling people including ancestors, old friends, doctors--even yourself
• Find quality, reliable information on medicine and technology
• Get up-to-the-minute news from thousands of sources at Google News
• Set up automated tools that search while you sleep
• Recover content that’s been removed from the web
• Find and buy exactly what you’re looking for with Froogle
• Locate travel deals that can save you thousands of dollars
• Mine business information and competitive intelligence
• Hack Google via Web APIs
• Be the first to use cutting-edge technology developed at Google Labs
• Access Usenet through Google Groups

Chris Sherman is president of Searchwise LLC, a Boulder, Colorado-based Web consulting firm, and editor of SearchDay, a daily newsletter from SearchEngineWatch.com.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 456 pages
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill Osborne Media; 1 edition (May 27, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0072257873
• ISBN-13: 978-0072257878
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #401,815 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Save Your Money, September 17, 2005

By	NJ Teacher (Galloway, NJ, USA) - See all my reviews

Although this book is well written and contained much information, there was little information included that is not already available on Google's Help pages for free. Buy this book only if you don't like reading online help pages.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars try some of these options?, August 5, 2005

By	W Boudville (Terra, Sol 3) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Sherman offers instructions into how much you can do with Google. Way beyond its signature searching ability. Perhaps the most obvious and successful is its news feeds. An excellent way to read from newspapers all over the world.

Also, in its regular searching, Google stores old versions of many pages it spiders. Sometimes you may find this useful, when a website deletes some of its content before you got to it.

Plus, there are the thousands of newsgroups. Ironically, some of these predate Google and the Web itself. They hark back to when the Internet communication was a much simpler text-based mode.

For programmer types, Sherman explains the Google API. Which lets you write code that programmatically hooks up to Google, without the drawbacks of screen scraping.

With several of the Google options that Sherman describes, it is unclear what profit Google ultimately makes out of them, beyond just mindshare. But I guess its search profits are so lucrative that it can afford to bleed on these other options.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Comes in handy sometimes, February 8, 2007

By	Carsten Cumbrowski "Carsten aka Roy/SAC & Cir... (Fresno, CA USA) - See all my reviews

The book is a bit outdated, but there is nothing anybody can do about it. By the time a book is written, edited, published and finally available for purchase at your local book store did pass so much time that is measured in Google or Internet time a small eternity. Every book to the subject is by default outdated by the time you can buy it.

However, as long as the book provides general truth and methods in addition to specifics, long time value is still guaranteed. I would say this is partially true with this book. It does focus on specifics and most stuff is still true, but a lot of stuff changed since then, in some cases dramatically.

I use Google for years now and consider myself very Internet savvy, especially when it comes to search engines and even I learned some nice tricks from the book.

It comes in handy sometimes and I am sure that it will be useful for a few more years to come, but I would not expect too much from it. I have not found any better book in print format yet, but the best place for this kind of information is actually the Internet itself.

Still, I love to have a print version around. That's may be just me being old fashioned, but I am sure that I am not the only one out there.