Understanding the Google Results Page
Understanding the Google Results Page
Every Google search results page for a Web search includes at least three basic types of information:
_ A summary of the search results
_ The search results themselves
_ A few things you can do with the results
Note: Many (but not all) search result pages contain additional types of information, such as sponsored links (text ads on the right side of the page and sometimes also above the search results), news links from Google News when your keywords are newsworthy, Froogle results when Google interprets your keywords to be oriented toward products, and results from your own hard drive if you are running Google Desktop. A Google results page can bristle with information when operating on all cylinders. The results summary is located in the shaded bar, above and to the right of the results list. The summary tells you how many total results for your keywords exist in the Google index and how long the search took. (Rarely does a Google search require more than two seconds.) Next to the results summary, your keywords are displayed as links. When you click one of those links, you go to Answers.com for a definition of the word. This seems a bit gratuitous — if you didn’t know what a word means, why would you use it as a keyword? But don’t underestimate the variety of ways that people use Google, including as a dictionary. Answers.com also functions as a thesaurus, so if a certain keyword isn’t delivering good results, perhaps a synonym (derived from Answers.com) would. Note that the links to Answers.com appear only when Google’s language is set to English — naturally enough, because Answers.com is primarily an English dictionary.
The search results consist of the page name, which is hyperlinked to the page itself. Below that is a short bit of relevant text from the page. Below the text you can see the page’s URL, which is there for information value and is not a link. Next to the URL is a number indicating the size of the page. Glancing at the page size helps you decide whether or not to visit it; pages more than 50K (that’s 50 kilobytes) are too large for a quick visit if you don’t have high-speed Internet access.
The Google staff doesn’t compose the page title or the accompanying text, which explains why they’re a little goofy sometimes and incoherent other times. The page title is created by the page developer. Some page designers forget how important the page title is, or they pack in lots of words to try and get the page higher on the search results pages of search engines such as Google.
The text below the result link is not necessarily descriptive of the result page or even cogent. Google clips sentences and fragments that contain your keywords and presents them as evidence that you have a good hit. This is more useful than you might think. In fact, it’s absolutely amazing how often a glance at the first few results and their accompanying text answers a search query without even visiting an outside page.
Note: The result link does not identify where on the result page your keywords are located. Not uncommonly, you link to a page and must then search in that page for relevant information — a headache when the page is long. You can always use your browser’s Find feature to locate specific words on any Web page. However, the problem is solved more elegantly by the Google Toolbar.
Breaking Down Web Search Results
Three other elements are found on nearly every search results page. They are
_ The Google cache
_ Similar pages
_ Indented results
These features enhance the value of the results page. The first two, in particular, represent hidden power that many people don’t take advantage of.
The Google cache
A cache (pronounced “cash”) is a storage area for computer files. Google maintains an enormous cache of Web pages. Don’t confuse the cache with Google’s Web index. Actually, for practical purposes, it doesn’t matter whether you confuse them or not, but they are different.
The index is a database of Web page content, stripped of its formatting. The cache contains the pages themselves. By and large, clicking the Cached link provides a quicker display of the target page because you’re getting it from Google’s computer instead of from the Internet at large.
So why would you ever not use the Cached link instead of the main page title link? Mainly because the cached page is not necessarily up-to-the-minute, especially with pages that change frequently (such as Weblogs and news sites). If you view the cached version of a page that you know changes frequently and is dated, such as the front page of a newspaper site, you can see that Google’s cache is a day or more behind. For users without high-speed Internet access, it’s more convenient to pull from the cache when looking for a big page (about 50K or so) that doesn’t change much. You might also use the Cached link if the page title link refuses to display the page for some reason. One disadvantage to pulling up a cached search result is the Google notice that appears atop all cached pages. That is one bulky notice, taking up about two vertical inches of screen space on a screen resolution of 800 x 600. Besides being an eyesore, the notice sometimes makes additional scrolling necessary if you want to see the entire page. If you get tired of the notice, click its link to the uncached page.
The cache link comes in handy when you want to take a brief trip back in time, to view a Web page that you know has changed or has been taken away. Once, David Letterman, on his late-night show, complained that the CBS site displayed a picture of Letterman’s rival, Jay Leno. Letterman’s show is taped in the afternoon, and by the time the show aired CBS had removed the offending image. Many people, including myself, wanted to preserve the amusing gaffe, and we did so by calling up the old page in Google’s cache.
Similar pages
The Similar Pages link is interesting although not always tremendously useful. Clicking this link starts a new search for pages that somehow resemble the original search result. Sorry to be vague, but Google isn’t very talkative about its Similar Pages formula. The results are interesting and more diverse than you might expect. You’d think the search would yield a narrowed set of results, but my experience is to the contrary. Search for Britney Spears, for example, and you get a solid set of results including fan sites. Click the Similar Pages link under Britney spears.com, and you get a far-ranging assortment of pages, including unofficial fan pages and sites dedicated to other singers and bands. Searching with Similar Pages is a bit of a crapshoot — or perhaps I should say it’s an adventure. Sometimes a pointless one. So when should you use Similar Pages? It’s useful to get a sense of the network lurking around a Web page. Part of what the engine does with Similar Pages is explore outgoing links from the target page. On my site, for example, if I have a link to an article I wrote
on another site, Similar Pages for bradhill.com will list that other site. Last time I checked, though, Similar Pages to my site also listed a Web page titled Amish Tech Support. There’s no connection that I can see, though I respect the Amish and some day would like to try plowing a field. So, whenever you use Similar Pages, do so with an open mind.
Indented results
Some search results are offset from the main body of results with an indentation. These indented sites are located in the same domain as the target page above them. They are indented to remind you that it might be redundant to
click both the target page and an indented site.
Google refrains from listing all pages in a single domain that match your keywords. But you can see more results from that domain by clicking the More results from www.domain.com link in any indented search result. Doing so is a great way to perform a minisearch within any domain that has already proved useful to you.
Searching in a large Web site (also called a domain) can be accomplished another way: by using a special search operator called the site operator. This operator tells Google to apply your keywords to a specified domain. You type the site operator, the domain, and the keywords in a single glop of instructions. For example, if you want to search the New York Times for stories that mention Condoleeza Rice, you could do so with a single entry: site: www.nytimes.com condoleeza rice You can reverse the order of the syntax by placing the keyword(s) before the site operator and domain, without affecting the search results.
Using Advanced Search
Later in this chapter, I cover the use of special query terms (similar to the site operator just described), general search operators that can be used with keywords, and searching for specified types of documents. All these tricks and more are consolidated on the Advanced Search page. To get to this page, click the Advanced Search link on the Google home page.
Use Advanced Search for any one of three reasons:
_ You want to focus a search more narrowly than a general keyword search.
_ You don’t want to bother with the complexity and thorny syntax of search operators.
_ You want to combine more than one search operation.
The Advanced Search page bundles many keyword boxes and drop-down menus to launch a finely targeted search. You don’t have to use everything this page has to offer. In fact, you may conduct a simple, one-keyword search from here, although that would be like using a race car to buy groceries.
Following is a review of the Advanced Search features. After setting any combination of these features, click the Google Search button to get your results.
Using multiple keywords
At the top of the Advanced Search page are a series of keyword boxes grouped in a shaded area called Find results. You use the four keyword boxes in this area to tell Google how to manage multiple keywords. If you have just one keyword, type it in the top box. The instructions next to each keyword box correspond to Boolean operators, which are typed shorthand instructions covered later in this chapter. The Advanced Search page gives you the laser exactness of Boolean searching without all the typing.
Use these keyword boxes in the following ways:
_ With all of the words: Putting keywords here forces Google to scour for pages that contain every word, with no exceptions. It has the effect of narrowing search results. For example, if you type alan greenspan federal reserve, you won’t see irrelevant pages that contain only alan or only federal.
_ With the exact phrase: This is like using quotation marks in most search engines and delivers pages that contain your keywords in the exact order and with the exact spelling that you used. You might use this option for people’s names (david hyde pierce), sport teams with their cities (los angeles dodgers), and colloquial phrases (jump the shark).
_ With at least one of the words: This option is useful when you’re less picky about matching your words. It has the effect of widening search results. For example, if you’re conducting broad research about building string instruments, you might type violin cello viola in this box, with instrument building in the top box.
_ Without the words: Much confusion can be avoided with this keyword box, which instructs Google to eliminate matches that contain certain words. This command is useful when one of your keywords is often associated with other words. It has the effect of narrowing search results and making them more accurate. For example, if you’re looking for pages about giants in fairy tales, you can stack words into this box that would match with pages about certain sports teams, such as new york san Francisco baseball football. You’d also need to place the giants keyword in the top box and fairy tale in the exact phrase box. Here’s something to keep in mind: Google’s general search results are so useful that Boolean commands are usually unnecessary. It all depends on your level of searching. If, during a general search, you find yourself looking beyond the first page of results (given thirty or fewer results per page), the Advanced Search keyword boxes might speed your searches along. Using the Advanced page is also simply fun and helps focus the search goal in your mind.
You can see how your Find results entries translate into Boolean operators by looking in the keyword box atop the search results page (and also in the blue summary bar). In the preceding example about instrument building, the Boolean search string comes out as instrument building violin OR cello OR viola Examining the search string on the results page is one way to get the hang of Boolean language on-the-fly. The appearance of the string also gives you a chance to adjust it for a new search without returning to the Advanced Search page.
Other Advanced Search features
The central portion of the Advanced Search page contains six settings designed to narrow your results. They are
_ Language: Similar to the Search Language setting on the Preferences page, this pull-down menu instructs Google to return search results only in the specified language. The default setting is any language. Whereas the Preferences page has check boxes, allowing you to select multiple target languages, this menu limits your choice to a single language (or all languages).
And whereas your settings on the Preferences page affect all your Googling until you change them, the Advanced Search setting affects just one search at a time.
_ File Format: Google recognizes certain distinct file formats, such as Microsoft Word documents (which end in the .doc extension) and Adobe Acrobat (pdf) files. You can use the File Format setting to include or exclude selected file formats. Use the drop-down menu to select Only (to include your selected format) or Don’t (to exclude your selected format). Then use the second pull-down menu to select the format. Feel free to ignore this setting if you’re conducting a general Web earch.
When Any Format is selected in the second drop-down menu, your search results include all file types recognized by Google and will mostly consist of Web pages. When you get a search result in non-Web format, you can read it in its original form if you have the program associated with the file type. Or, conveniently, you can view Google’s translation to
Web-page format (HTML).
_ Date: Google’s index crawler can determine when a page was last changed. A page update might be as trivial as changing one word, or it might involve a massive content revision. The drop-down menu for this feature doesn’t give you fine control over the update time — you may select pages updated in the past three months, past six months, and past year. That might seem useless, but one purpose of choosing three months over the default setting (anytime) is to reduce the occurrence of dead links (pages that no longer exist) in your search results.
_ Occurrences: This powerful and useful setting whisks away questionable search results and gives you control of how important your keywords are to the matched page. The purpose is not to determine where your keywords exist in the page’s text (that is, how near to the top of the page they occur), nor is it to help you avoid scrolling the page. This feature culls pages in which your keywords appear in the page title, in the page URL, or — amazingly — in the page’s incoming links. (Again, Google’s capability to sense the network surrounding each page is astounding and helpful.) Use the title or URL choice to powerfully narrow the search results, returning high-probability matches.
_ Domain: Like the Occurrences setting, you can use this feature to include or exclude matches with certain properties. In this case, you’re allowing or eliminating a certain domain, which is the portion of a site’s URL after www. When typing the domain, you may type the www or leave it out. So, for the New York Times domain, you could type www.nytimes.com or nytimes.com. Use the first drop-down menu to choose Only (includes the selected domain and no others) or Don’t (excludes the selected domain and admits all others).
_ SafeSearch: The default position of this setting turns off SafeSearch if you have it turned on in your preferences. You can activate SafeSearch on a per-search basis by using this feature of the Advanced Search page. No matter what you do here, it doesn’t affect your preference setting for Google searches launched from the home page. Following are the two page-specific Advanced Search features:
_ Similar: Identical to the Similar Pages link on the search results page, this feature finds pages related to the URL you type in the keyword box.
_ Links: This one is addictive and shows off Google’s extreme network awareness. Type a URL here, and Google finds Web pages that contain links to that page. The URL of your specified page is the keyword you type in the box. Because most large sites link to their own home pages from every other page, these searches yield a lot of tedious results from within the domain. However, it’s fun to try with an inner page from a site. Google provides the Advanced Image Search page for fancy picture searching. I describe it later in this chapter, in the “A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Keywords” section. The Advanced Search page just described relates to Web searches, not image searches.
Note: Google started including a Froogle keyword box on the Advanced Search page in 2004, after moving the Froogle link to the home page as one of Google’s primary engines. Froogle is a product-based shopping engine. You may certainly start a Froogle search from here, but there is little reason to, save in those moments when you suddenly must find the cheapest Razor scooter in the midst of a search for articles about Condoleeza Rice in the New York Times.
