The Internet puts a wealth of information at your fingertips, and all you have to know is how to find it. Google is your ultimate research tool--a search engine that indexes more than 2.4 billion web pages, in more than 30 languages, conducting more than 150 million searches a day. The more you know about Google, the better you are at pulling data off the Web. You've got a cadre of techniques up your sleeve--tricks you've learned from practice, from exchanging ideas with others, and from plain old trial and error--but you're always looking for better ways to search. It's the "hacker" in you: not the troublemaking kind, but the kind who really drives innovation by trying new ways to get things done. If this is you, then you'll find new inspiration (and valuable tools, too) in Google Hacks from O'Reilly's new Hacks Series.

Google Hacks is a collection of industrial-strength, real-world, tested solutions to practical problems. The book offers a variety of interesting ways for power users to mine the enormous amount of information that Google has access to, and helps you have fun while doing it. You'll learn clever and powerful methods for using the advanced search interface and the new Google API, including how to build and modify scripts that can become custom business applications based on Google. Google Hacks contains 100 tips, tricks and scripts that you can use to become instantly more effective in your research. Each hack can be read in just a few minutes, but can save hours of searching for the right answers.

Written by experts for intelligent, advanced users, O'Reilly's new Hacks Series have begun to reclaim the term "hacking" for the good guys. In recent years the term "hacker" has come to be associated with those nefarious black hats who break into other people's computers to snoop, steal information, or disrupt Internet traffic. But the term originally had a much more benign meaning, and you'll still hear it used this way whenever developers get together. Our new Hacks Series is written in the spirit of true hackers--the people who drive innovation.

If you're a Google power user, you'll find the technical edge you're looking for in Google Hacks.

1. Chapter 1 Searching Google

   1. Hacks #1-28

   2. What Google Isn’t

   3. What Google Is

   4. Google Basics

   5. The Special Syntaxes

   6. Advanced Search

   7. Setting Preferences

   8. Language Tools

   9. Anatomy of a Search Result

   10. Specialized Vocabularies: Slang and Terminology

   11. Getting Around the 10 Word Limit

   12. Word Order Matters

   13. Repetition Matters

   14. Mixing Syntaxes

   15. Hacking Google URLs

   16. Hacking Google Search Forms

   17. Date-Range Searching

   18. Understanding and Using Julian Dates

   19. Using Full-Word Wildcards

   20. inurl: Versus site:

   21. Checking Spelling

   22. Consulting the Dictionary

   23. Consulting the Phonebook

   24. Tracking Stocks

   25. Google Interface for Translators

   26. Searching Article Archives

   27. Finding Directories of Information

   28. Finding Technical Definitions

   29. Finding Weblog Commentary

   30. The Google Toolbar

   31. The Mozilla Google Toolbar

   32. The Quick Search Toolbar

   33. GAPIS

   34. Googling with Bookmarklets

2. Chapter 2 Google Special Services and Collections

   1. Hacks #29-35

   2. Google’s Current Offerings

   3. Google Directory

   4. Google Groups

   5. Google Images

   6. Google News

   7. Google Catalogs

   8. Froogle

   9. Google Labs

3. Chapter 3 Third-Party Google Services

   1. Hacks #36-40

   2. Of Google, but Not Google

   3. Tinkering with the UI

   4. Expanding the Options with the Google API

   5. Thinking Way Outside the Box

   6. XooMLe: The Google API in Plain Old XML

   7. Google by Email

   8. Simplifying Google Groups URLs

   9. What Does Google Think Of...

   10. GooglePeople

4. Chapter 4 Non-API Google Applications

   1. Hacks #41-49

   2. Don’t Try This at Home

   3. Building a Custom Date-Range Search Form

   4. Building Google Directory URLs

   5. Scraping Google Results

   6. Scraping Google AdWords

   7. Scraping Google Groups

   8. Scraping Google News

   9. Scraping Google Catalogs

   10. Scraping the Google Phonebook

5. Chapter 5 Introducing the Google Web API

   1. Hacks #50-59

   2. Why an API?

   3. Signing Up and Google’s Terms

   4. The Google Web APIs Developer’s Kit

   5. Using the Key in a Hack

   6. What’s WSDL?

   7. Understanding the Google API Query

   8. Understanding the Google API Response

   9. Programming the Google Web API with Perl

   10. Looping Around the 10-Result Limit

   11. The SOAP::Lite Perl Module

   12. Plain Old XML, a SOAP::Lite Alternative

   13. NoXML, Another SOAP::Lite Alternative

   14. Programming the Google Web API with PHP

   15. Programming the Google Web API with Java

   16. Programming the Google Web API with Python

   17. Programming the Google Web API with C# and .NET

   18. Programming the Google Web API with VB.NET

6. Chapter 6 Google Web API Applications

   1. Hacks #60-85

   2. The Ingenuity of Millions

   3. Learning to Code

   4. What You’ll Find Here

   5. Finding More Google API Applications

   6. The Possibilities Aren’t Endless, but They’re Expanding

   7. Date-Range Searching with a Client-Side Application

   8. Adding a Little Google to Your Word

   9. Permuting a Query

   10. Tracking Result Counts over Time

   11. Visualizing Google Results

   12. Meandering Your Google Neighborhood

   13. Running a Google Popularity Contest

   14. Building a Google Box

   15. Capturing a Moment in Time

   16. Feeling Really Lucky

   17. Gleaning Phonebook Stats

   18. Performing Proximity Searches

   19. Blending the Google and Amazon Web Services

   20. Getting Random Results (On Purpose)

   21. Restricting Searches to Top-Level Results

   22. Searching for Special Characters

   23. Digging Deeper into Sites

   24. Summarizing Results by Domain

   25. Scraping Yahoo! Buzz for a Google Search

   26. Measuring Google Mindshare

   27. Comparing Google Results with Those of Other Search Engines

   28. SafeSearch Certifying URLs

   29. Syndicating Google Search Results

   30. Searching Google Topics

   31. Finding the Largest Page

   32. Instant Messaging Google

7. Chapter 7 Google Pranks and Games

   1. Hacks #86-92

   2. The No-Result Search (Prank)

   3. Google Whacking

   4. GooPoetry

   5. Creating Google Art

   6. Google Bounce

   7. Google Mirror

   8. Finding Recipes

8. Chapter 8 The Webmaster Side of Google

   1. Hacks #93-100

   2. Google’s Preeminence

   3. Google’s Importance to Webmasters

   4. The Mysterious PageRank

   5. The Equally Mysterious Algorithm

   6. Google’s Ad Programs

   7. Keeping Up with Google’s Changes

   8. In a Word: Relax

   9. A Webmaster’s Introduction to Google

   10. Generating Google AdWords

   11. Inside the PageRank Algorithm

   12. 26 Steps to 15K a Day

   13. Being a Good Search Engine Citizen

   14. Cleaning Up for a Google Visit

   15. Getting the Most out of AdWords

   16. Removing Your Materials from Google

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