I think that everyone out there knows what Google is, at least they know part of what it is. You probably all know that it is the biggest and one of the best, if not the very best, search engine, but did you know that there are also other services that are available too? I personally like different searches for different things. For images I prefer Fagan Finder. It is available online or through my website, under the Comprehensive Internet Search menu. I also like a good meta search when I am researching article topics. These are front ends for many search engines that can all be used at once. For example, Dogpile search queries bring up the results of many different search engines, including the Google search results. In my case this makes searching less time consuming, but with all that is available for me, I still like the Google search engine for doing casual searching. For the average person it just about answers all your needs. Before we get into the other services, lets look at the search engine first.

When you use google you can enter a word or phrase. If you enter a word, you will get all the results of websites that have that word listed. So far this is very simple. If you enter a phrase it is like entering an individual group of words. What I mean is, the results will show any of the words in the phrase, not necessarily the phrase. There is an easy way to search for only the exact phrase, just put it in quotes. You can always go to the advanced search feature of Google to specify searches that are more complex. This allows you to set all different parameters for your search. Did you know that Google has a guide for using its search engine? It has three levels of tutorials, Novice, Expert and Teens. Did you ever notice the button marked "I'm feeling lucky"? Did you ever wonder what it was for? It automatically brings you to the first result of your search. I don't ever use it, because I feel it is impractical since I would rather see the choices that are listed. One of the things you can do with the Google search engine is use special characters with your search terms. You can type in Example1 + Example 2 and you will only get results that contain either or both names. I tried Car+Boat and I got amphibious cars and cars, I didn't seem to get any boats. I reversed it and typed Boat+Car and got a lot more references to boats. You can also use the - sign by saying something like Yankees - baseball and you will only get search results about Yankee baseball. Do you want to expand a search using one word? Try using the ~ sign. Google gives an example as follows: ~inexpensive. This returns matches to inexpensive, cheap, affordable and low cost and anything relating to cheap. You could also enter something like ~gun ~laser and get all the sites that match all the definitions for both. There is another use for this special character and that is using it to get all information from a particular place. Here is an example of that, NASA ~planets. This search will give you everything NASA has on a particular site on planets and all related bodies. You can also use OR and | (this is the vertical bar above the \ key). It works this way, if you search for New York OR New Jersey you will get results for both. You can get the same thing by searching New York | New Jersey. You can use the OR term with several search terms such as Search1 OR Search2 OR Search3. Another special character you can use is " ..". This is generally used for price ranges. An example of this is new car $10000..$20000. I think you get the picture. This will bring up new cars within the price range of $10,000 to $20,000. Again much of the same things can be done through the advance search option. You can also restrict searches to sites. Here is how you do that, you can enter the site name:brownuniversity.edu and you will only get results for brown from that site that was searched. An example of this is using Google to go through the Yahoo search engine by typing http://search.yahoo.com/aboutfacts.net. This sends the Yahoo results through Google for the About Facts Net website. Want to only get results for certain domains? Use something like this, firemen:net and you will only get the firemen sites that have a .net address. You can do a search of related sites by typing, related:www.example.com or even find out what pages link to a site by typing link:www.site.com. There may be a certain type of file that you want to search for, an example of this might be a .pdf file. You can type aboutfacts.net filetype:pdf.

I know this can get a little boring, but try and bear with me, these things come in handy. You can substitute other terms instead of filetype to find out other things. Most are self explanatory, they are allintitle, allintext, allinurl, allinanchor, site, related, link. cache, id, info, phonebook, rpphonebook, stocks. These are only available in the web search. Not all of these terms are available in all Google searches. For example, several are unavailable in the image search. Again some of these terms can be combined when searching. Google can be used for other things besides searches. It is a calculator. Type in your term such as 3+2 and you will get 5. If you have any questions on how these thing work or want to know more, you can go to **http://www.googleguide.com/

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Google has many sides to it. It has translating services, a toolbar that comes in very handy, I use it, and a great alert service. If you want to see how popular a web page is and have the Google toolbar installed, you can just look at the popularity indicator in the toolbar. My home page ranks about 30%, which is actually quite good for a one person operation and sites like Yahoo rank at 100%. Google Alerts allow you to set up an alert in the topics of your choice and when anything comes out on these topics an email will be sent to you with the sites that have included this topic. I use it in a limited way myself. To set up an alert you can go to http://www.google.com/alerts. Today everyone seems to be interested in blogs, and Google has a special search just for them at http://blogsearch.google.com/. If there a particular book you are searching for, you can go to the Google book search at http://books.google.com/. I am not a lover of catalogs, but some people are and they can go to the Google catalog search at http://catalogs.google.com/. You can even check out your online purchases at the Google checkout. Google has a nice desktop search that you can put on you computer, it is located at http://desktop.google.com/?utm_source=en-et-more&utm_medium=et&utm_campaign=en. Everyone loves Google Earth and its photos of the Earth from orbit. You can visit any place on the planet. Just click on http://earth.google.com/ to become master of the world. Are you a financial type? Get your info on Google Finance at http://finance.google.com/finance. Need to find a local business and get directions? You can go to Google Maps and get them easily. Google Maps is located at http://maps.google.com/maps. Google has a news archive where you can search thousands and thousands of news stories. It is located at http://news.google.com/. Google has a notebook service where you can place information you have copied while surfing, *click here to go to the Google Notebook. Do you want to research an invention or just check a patent? You can go to the Google Patent Search engine, which is located at http://www.google.com/patents. Looking to buy something? Then go to Google Product Search at http://www.google.com/products. If you are a student, a good place to search for info for papers is Google Scholar at http://scholar.google.com/. Now hold on, there are still many more services to go. Take a breath, maybe sit for awhile. Are you ready? Here we go again. There are specialized Google searches where different universities and entities can be searched. The search is located at http://www.google.com/options/specialsearches.html. We now have a very popular Google video search. Check it out at http://video.google.com/. Google Code specializes in downloading APIs and open source code. It is located at http://code.google.com/. If you would like to build and customize your own Google search engine go to http://google.com/coop/cse/. If you want to see what Google is working on, you can go to Google Labs at http://labs.google.com/. Just one word to the wise, some of these projects don't last, so think about that before getting dependant on them. Google has a blog that anyone can use at https://www.blogger.com/start. It also has a calendar that can be shared, *click here to go to it. Google allows you to create docs and spreadsheets online, *click here to go to Google Docs and Spreadsheets. If you would like to use Google Gmail, email *click here. You can use Google to create mailing lists and discussion groups at http://groups.google.com/. Want to meet new people and stay in contact with friends, Google has created a place to do this at http://www.orkut.com/GLogin.aspx?done=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.orkut.com%2F. Sharing photos is a big thing nowadays and it can be done at Picasa, a Google site at http://picasa.google.com/#utm_source=en-us-more&utm_campaign=en-pic&utm_medium=et. Google has a site where you can construct 3D drawings. It is located at http://sketchup.google.com/. I think that most of us have heard of instant messaging and Google has a comprehensive site where no download is required, it is called Google Talk and is located at http://www.google.com/talk/. Found a site that looks interesting, but is in a foreign language? Don't fret, just go to Google translate at http://translate.google.com/translate_t. Google now owns YouTube where you can watch all kinds of videos at http://www.google.com/support/youtube/. Google has bundled some software if you would like it. To get the download, go to http://pack.google.com/intl/en/pack_installer_new.html?ciNum=11. You can also get a Web Accelerator from Google at http://webaccelerator.google.com/.

I could go on and mention the mobile tools and some other Google projects,even other Google sites, but enough is enough. Google is a gigantic organization that has many facets and is ever expanding. You can see why Microsoft feels threatened by them. They are already expanding into areas that Microsoft has been in for years and Microsoft is feeling the pinch, that is why Microsoft wants to buy Yahoo. Anyway, I hope this has helped you learn what is available from Google and also how to search faster and more accurately using their search engine.

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**Google Guide