Google Search

"Who needs a degree when we have Web e-search engines?" -- PhlIp

A favorite search engine of many, for many reasons:

Results are sorted by a "relevancy" heuristic that works surprisingly well. http://www.google.com/technology/
It is very fast.
The GoogleCache.
Low-profile ads.
They are prompt to fix bugs when reported.
They crawl (index) the Web relatively completely and frequently.
(BrokenImage 2005-04-25)

Google provides some nice services beyond basic searching:

GoogleNews - automatic gathered news service
GoogleGroups - huge UseNet archive (former )
GoogleDirectory - OpenDirectoryProject
GoogleImage? - image search. Unlike 3 nice features above, this is not so useful.
GoogleAnswers - A pay research service where questions are answered by paid researchers
GoogleSearchBox - search box in your IE toolbar
GoogleLabs? - http://labs.google.com/, several new Google technologies which are in the testing phase.
GoogleCalculator - Do math or convert units. Just search for "2+3", "square root of pi" or "4 hectares in square fathoms"

Google critics: http://www.google-watch.org/ SearchEngineWatch? also critiqued the critique, and concluded that the concerns had some basis, but were somewhat alarmist. You can find some interesting and odd information about this search engine at http://google-blog.dirson.com/.

Here is a GoogleSearch of the pages including wiki pages hosted at http://c2.com

http://www.google.com/search?as_q=&num=100&btnG=Google+Search&as_epq=&as_oq=WardCunningham+Cunningham&as_eq=&lr=&as_occt=any&as_dt=i&as_sitesearch=c2.com&safe=off

More about Google and Wiki see GoogleMyWiki. Includes suggestions for utilizing page ranking a la Google for organizing the output of a Wiki site-specific the search engine.

I didn't get very far with Google. I stumbled over the GoogleCache feature which does not pick up pages from the original wiki (these pages) but does pick up the other wikis hosted here.

While trying to figure that out, JohnDeBruyn (May 27, 2001) found a really nifty picture of Ward:

That's WardCunningham

Best new feature: using words found in building the index as possible corrections allows Google to spellcheck ANYTHING. Just now it corrected me on "Miskatonic". I am duly impressed.

Along with spell-check GoogleSearch also features an exceptional calculator.

e.g. http://www.google.com/search?q=how+many+light+years+are+in+a+fathom

It didn't do so well yet with this one:

http://www.google.com/search?q=how+many+seconds+are+in+a+nanocentury

MicrosoftWindows users might also find this useful: http://www.dqsd.net/. It's a free (FreeAsInBeer and FreeAsInSpeech) application that sits in your toolbar and provides direct access to Google and many other free Internet services such as dictionaries, news, IMDB, all user-configurable and extendable.

"Searches are logged by time of day, originating I.P. address (information that can be used to link searches to a specific computer), and the sites on which the user clicked. People tell things to search engines that they would never talk about publicly - Viagra, pregnancy scares, fraud, face lifts. What is interesting in the aggregate can be seem an invasion of privacy if narrowed to an individual."

Newsweek (Europe) Dec 16 2002 issue had an interesting article about "The World According to Google", including some of the more troubling aspects in recent times where search results turn out to be filtered for different regions or because of litigation threats.

How do I use google? I've written, in spanish, how to do an important part of my job using google. The link is http://www.seedwiki.com/page.cfm?doc=ResolvedorUniversalDeProblemas&wikiid=1460&wpid=0 (it's also a wiki, so you can add whatever you want).

The following claim has been made on the FindPage page: "Google indexes this site every few days." And here above, "They crawl (index) the Web relatively completely and frequently." One should not conclude from these statements that the c2 wiki is indexed completely every few days.

The following test was performed 2005-04-25. Go to Google and search for site:c2.com alright. Google reports several pages which it believes contain 'alright'. Some of these pages are DomainDisputes, FilthInterface, MatureProgrammer, and WikiNumbers. Yet if you check these pages you'll notice I changed the spellings to 'all right' on 2004-05-21. Conclusion: Google has not indexed these pages in over 11 months.

-- ElizabethWiethoff

Truly shocking.

Agree. If you check the GoogleCache copy of a page, you'll see the date the page was last indexed. As of 2005-04-27, you can see from the cache that DomainDisputes was indexed on Apr 14, 2004; FilthInterface was indexed Feb 22, 2004; etc. Each of these pages comes from Google's "supplemental" list. Any page Google lists as a "Supplemental Result" has not been indexed in quite a while. Other pages have been indexed within just a few weeks. It's anyone's guess why some pages are indexed much more often than others. -- Eliz

Google tip sharing

For searching UseNet using groups.google.com, the URL for the returned items is a BigBallOfMud. However there is a way to find the threadID, which will locate the item with a much shorter URL.

Unfortunately I can only see the threadID by moving mouse cursor over one of the items in the "view all threads" option.

See Advanced options for GoogleSearch at http://www.googleguide.com/advanced_operators.html