The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group Google Hacks - For the Bookshelf Major Keary |
Google Hacks brings together a collection of a hundred "tips and tools gathered from expert users of Google, as well as developers who are excited by Google's new API". It is part of an interesting Hacks series published by O'Reilly and carries the sub-title, 100 Industrial-Strength Tips & Tools.
This is not an amateur's guide to tweaking Google. There are some items that ordinary users will find useful, but most of the book deals with ways of using the Google Application Program Interface (API) by way of scripts.
In April 2002 Google made its API available to developers so that they could legally gain access to Google search results with automated queries. Google's terms of service prohibit any other way of using automated software. In the book's acknowledgments one of the authors says, ". most of this book wouldn't exist without the release of Google's API. A big thanks to Google for building a playground for us thousands of search engine junkies".
One doesn't have to be a 'search engine junkie' to appreciate Google Hacks. Some of the hacks may seem esoteric, but the discussions go well beyond bare bones solutions to if-you-want-to-do-this problems. It offers an insight into the workings of a search engine-something that is hard to find in web literature. Apart from how to take advantage of Google's features, it also explains how to get around Google's weaknesses.
In a chapter on 'Non-API Google Applications' the book tells the reader that one "can't . do everything with the Google API [even though it] is a great way to search Google's main body of web pages . it doesn't get much further than that". There is a limit on what the API "can pull from Google's main web search ... [it] can't do a phonebook search ... and it can't access the data from Google News, Google Catalogs, or most of Google's other specialty search engines" (don't confuse the reference here to `a phonebook search' with the Google Phonebook Service). We are then introduced to scraping (as in 'scrape'), which "is the act of using a program to pull information from an HTML page". There is not space here to expand on what can be done with scraping, or its limitations; however, the examples use Perl scripts. As I have commented elsewhere, it is not difficult to learn enough Perl for particular jobs-and Perl is free.
A chapter, The Webmaster Side of Google, discusses "how Google treats search engines" and how to improve site ranking. This is straight advice: no code, no technical stuff. It offers a Search Engine Optimization Template that is brief, but illuminating.
Regardless of level of expertise and scripting knowledge (or lack of it), this well-written book makes for pleasant and informative browsing. The non-technical reader can skip the code and technical material and find much of interest.
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Tara Calishan and Rael Dornfest: Google Hacks ISBN 0-596-00447-8 Published by O'Reilly, 329 pp., RRP $59.95 incl. GST. |
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Reprinted from the August 2003 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia
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