Getting To Know Google - January 2004
By Kelly Embleton

Most of us, if not all, have heard of Google and probably use it quite often for our Internet searches. Google is the fastest growing search engine with over 200 million searches a day and over 3 billion sites searched. It's no wonder it has become known as the 'ultimate online searching machine'.

When visiting www.google.com or www.google.ca, you can easily be deceived by what Google really has to offer users. It is not just a search box and search button on the homepage. Google offers so much more than search results; it offers many services, features, tools and more, which I intend to shed more light on in this article.

First Things First
What exactly is a Google? "Googol" is the mathematical term for a 1 followed by 100 zeros. A googol is a very large number. There isn't a googol of anything in the universe. Google's use of the term, googol, reflects its mission to organize the immense amount of information available on the Web.

Fantastic Features
In addition to searching and finding answers to your inquiries, Google also offers many useful features. Here is a short list of features and descriptions. For all the Google features and information, visit www.google.com/help/features.html.

• Calculator - built in calculator to solve math problems involving basic arithmetic, more complicated math, units of measure and conversions.
• Cached Link - you can see the Web page as it looked when Google indexed it. The cached content is the content Google uses to judge whether the page is a relevant match for your query.
• File Types - allows you to search for non-HTML file formats including PDF documents and others.
• PhoneBook - allows you to look up American (www.google.com) and Canadian (www.google.ca) street addresses and phone number information.
• Who Links to You? - enables you to find all the pages that point to a specific URL using the query, link:siteURL, in the Google search box.
• Web Page Translation - allows English speakers access to a variety of non-English Web pages. This feature is currently available for pages published in Italian, French, Spanish, German, and Portuguese. If your search has non-English results, there will be a link to a version of that page translated into English.
• Google Preferences - enables you to save certain search preferences, including the number of results to show per page, the interface language, and whether or not to use SafeSearch filtering.
• SafeSearch Filtering - screens for sites that contain pornography and explicit sexual content and eliminates them from search results.

Aside from all of the features, Google also offers many services and tools. Again, listed here are only a few of the Google Services & Tools. For a complete list, visit www.google.com/options/index.html.

• Froogle - froogle.google.com - find products for sale from across the Web.
• Google Catalogs - catalogs.google.com - search and browse mail order catalogs online.
• Google Image Search - images.google.com - comprehensive image search with 425 million images.
• Google News - news.google.com - search and browse 4,500 continuously updated news sources.
• Google Browser Buttons - www.google.com/options/buttons.html - access Google's search technology by adding their buttons to your browser's personal toolbar.

Get Listed Already!
Submitting your site to Google is fairly easy. Google adds and updates new sites to their index each time they crawl the Web, and invite you to submit your URL online at www.google.ca/addurl.html. Google does not add all submitted URLs to their index, and cannot make any predictions or guarantees about when or if they will appear.

So there you have it, hopefully a few more useful resources for you and more ways to maximize your google.com visits.

Watch for Getting to Know Google - Part 2 in the next issue of CM.

Resources

• If you are searching for a site that contains a huge list of song lyrics, visit Lyrics Directory at www.lyricsdir.com. The Lyric Directory collection is alphabetized by first name, which makes it easy to find the lyrics you are looking for.

• Peavey Electronics Corporation has proudly introduced a newly designed Web site located at www.peavey.com. The new site features less "clicks" between the homepage and its product, artist and news content, allowing consumers easier access to information and shopping than previously available.

• Artistopia is an ultimate artist and musician resource. Artistopia is dedicated to providing artists/musicians with all the necessary productivity tools to professionalize their approach to the music industry. Artistopia membership programs are designed to offer artists a fair and uniform approach to shift their music careers into a higher gear. For complete Artistopia information, visit their site at www.icubator.com/artistopia.

• Great White Noise, online at www.greatwhitenoise.ca, is a Canadian site exposing independent music. Great White Noise features artists, news, links, reviews, forums and much more.

• Craviotto Percussion has announced that information on Craviotto Percussion company history, Craviotto Percussion handcrafted solid drumshells along with a virtual factory tour can now be seen on the Craviotto Percussion Web site: www.craviottopercussion.com.

• If you are looking for sheet music, songbooks, artist biographies, anthologies or greatest hits collections then visit Music Books Plus at www.musicbooksplus.com/sheetmusic. Music Books Plus has a vast selection of over 600 titles including: Best of Metallica, Ben Folds, Nickelback, Radiohead, Audioslave, Linkin Park, Paul McCartney and more.

• A great online resource for guitar tabs is Guitaretab.com. This site features over 35,000 tabs, as well as links, forums, lessons and more. Check it out at www.guitaretab.com.