Google Pocket Guide 1st Edition

by Tara Calishain (Author), Rael Dornfest (Contributor), Dj Adams (Contributor)

11 ratings

ISBN-13: 978-0596005504

ISBN-10: 0596005504

Why is ISBN important?

Have one to sell? Sell on Amazon

Buy new

$4.85

In Stock.

Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.

List Price: $9.95
Save: $5.10 (51%)

FREE Shipping on orders over $25.00 shipped by Amazon or get Fast, Free Shipping with Amazon Prime

Price

New from

Used from

Paperback

"Please retry"

$4.85

$2.99

$0.01

Beneath its deceptively simple search form, Google is a remarkably powerful and flexible search engine that indexes billions of web pages, handling more than 150 million searches a day. You know that what you're looking for must be in there somewhere, but how do you make Google work for you? Crafted from our best-selling Google Hacks title, the Google Pocket Guide provides exactly the information you need to make your searches faster and more effective, right from the start. The Google Pocket Guide unleashes the power behind that blinking cursor by delivering: A thorough but concise tour of Google's features Practical examples to inspire going beyond the basic keyword search Secrets for constructing more powerful queries using Google's special syntax Advice on how to understand and further refine the results Google provides Whether you're a student researching a topic for class, a medical or legal professional needing field-specific reference information, or a home user looking for that article on home repair you forgot to bookmark, the Google Pocket Guide will take you from mystified to mastery.

Customers who viewed this item also viewed

Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1

This shopping feature will continue to load items when the Enter key is pressed. In order to navigate out of this carousel please use your heading shortcut key to navigate to the next or previous heading.

K.M. Shea

192

Paperback
$9.99

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Tara Calishain is the creator of the site, ResearchBuzz. She is an expert on Internet search engines and how they can be used effectively in business situations.

Rael Dornfest is a Researcher at the O'Reilly & Associates focusing on technologies just beyond the pale. He assesses, experiments, programs, and writes for the O'Reilly network and O'Reilly publications. Dornfest is Program Chair of the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference, Chair of the RSS-DEV Working Group, and developer of Meerkat: An Open Wire Service. In his copious free time, he develops bits and bobs of Open Source software and maintains his raelity bytes Weblog.

DJ Adams is an old SAP hacker who still thinks JCL and S/370 assembler are pretty cool. In recent years he's been successfully combining open source software with R/3 to produce hybrid systems that show off the power of free software. He's the author of O'Reilly's Programming Jabber book, contributes articles to O'ReillyNet's P2P site, and has to own up to being responsible for the Jabber::Connection, Jabber::RPC and Jabber::Component::Proxy modules on CPAN.

Paperback: 140 pages
Publisher: O'Reilly Media; 1 edition (June 22, 2003)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0596005504
ISBN-13: 978-0596005504
Product Dimensions: 4.2 x 0.3 x 6.8 inches
Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Customer Reviews: 11 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,439,150 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #3397 in Computer Networking (Books)
- #6594 in Computer Networks, Protocols & APIs (Books)
- #13345 in Internet & Telecommunications

Would you like to tell us about a lower price?
If you are a seller for this product, would you like to suggest updates through seller support?

Customer reviews

5 star		56%
4 star		24%
3 star 0% (0%)		0%
2 star 0% (0%)		0%
1 star		20%

11 customer reviews

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Long in tooth, but still valuable

April 2, 2010

Verified Purchase

Google's search functions have changed a bit since this book was published in 2003, but it remains a valuable reference.

Why?

First, because Google's help function for search is not overly sophisticated or detailed.

Second, because the fundamental of Google searching have not changed and most people never learn all the subtleties that can make searching on Google far more effective. Most people, for example, don't know about special syntax elements like "intitle", "intext", "inanchor" and others.

About half the book is about other Google services, some of which have been deprecated or merged into other services.

Also, some of the information is, as you might expect, obsolete: Google changed its limit on the number of words in a search from 10 to 32 in 2005.

I am surprised in a way that the book has not been updated.

Still, considering its low price and high information ratio, it remains a worthwhile addition to any researcher's library.

Jerry

Helpful

Comment

Sharing Thoughts

A real surprise...

January 7, 2004

Review
When I got this book from O'Reilly, my first thought was "How cute! A little book for people who can't figure out a search engine." After reading it, I either have to include myself in that group or change my opinion of the book. This is really good stuff!
I knew there was more to Google than what I was probably using. I've seen the Google groups area, I've used the image area, and of course I've done web searches. But I didn't realize the power of the search syntax they use on the site. I didn't know that you can restrict searches to document types, include/exclude sites or domains, include/exclude based on posted/updated date, decide whether you want the search term in the title, the entire page, or as part of an anchor link. I didn't realize you could modify the URL on the fly to refine your search without going back to the search page each time. I didn't know anything about Froogle. And I definitely didn't know you could change your interface page to a variety of languages, including Klingon and pig Latin!
In a very concise, readable manner, the authors show you all you need to know to get started with the creation of much more powerful searches than you've had in the past. And they repeatedly emphasize that learning how to use Google is best done by experimentation. After reading this book (and it won't take you that long), you'll never view web searches in quite the same way again.
Conclusion
I used to say that if you give me five minutes, I can find what I'm looking for on the web. After reading this book, I may have to revise that to three minutes. If you get a chance to get this book, do so!

50 people found this helpful

Helpful

Comment

John Wetherbie

Add it to your utility belt!

July 21, 2003

The Google Pocket Guide contains a lot of good information in a small package. But - a book about how to make better use of Google? Isn't this information on the web already? For free!?! Well, some of it is but most of it isn't. Beyond presenting the various Google services and the syntax for using them the authors share tips and suggestions for getting the most out of this really cool set of tools.
The book goes over searching the web including the advanced search page and the advanced search operators (or special syntax) that Google provides. How operators can be combined to improve your search and what combinations to avoid is discussed. The ten-word limit on search terms and how to get around it is also presented. How to interpret the results you get, how to tweak the URLs you receive back to improve results, and when and why you should (or shouldn't) pay attention to Google's spelling suggestions make up the third section.
Part IV presents the other services and tools that Google provides beyond web searching, suggestions on how to use these tools effectively, and the advanced operators available. The last section of the book provides a quick syntax summary and an overview of Julian dates.
The discussions of Julian dates and the daterange: operator are good examples of the value the Google Pocket Guide provides. The book talks about how Google uses Julian dates for date restricted web searching. OK, you could find this out on Google's site if you know where to look. But there is more! The book also mentions that the Julian date associated with a page is when Google indexed the page not when it was made available to the web - a subtle but important distinction.
Overall I found this book an informative and easy read. My only concern is how current the information will remain since, as the authors point out, Google has been adding capabilities slowly over time. However, this concern is greatly outweighed by having the information available. This book is a good, quick reference to Google. Add it to your utility belt!

22 people found this helpful

Helpful

Comment

Google Pocket Guide 1st Edition

Customers who viewed this item also viewed

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Product details

Customer reviews

11 customer reviews

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.