The interface for Google is deceptively simple. If you go to Google.com , all you will see is in input box where you type your search words. It doesn’t try to be all things to all people. It’s not a Web portal, an entry point to everything. All it seems to do is search. I use it myself, several times a day.

But don’t let the simplicity of Google fool you. It is a powerful tool. This Google Hacks book introduced me to the hidden power of Google and has made me a better researcher.

Identifying the audience for this book is a challenge. Beginners will probably find it too jargon-filled, assuming too much knowledge and experience. If terms such as Boolean, syntax and modifier baffle you, this book will be over your head.

If you are looking for a basic book about searching the Web using Google, a better choice might be O’Reilly’s Google Pocket Guide, a condensed version of this book which omits the programming hacks and concentrates on the search tips. It is half the size and half the price.

Other beginner’s books are Google for Dummies and How to Use Google : The 30 Most Important Tips, Hacks and Tricks. The last one is interesting: it’s a PDF download, available from Amazon.Com. It’s only 12 pages, but it’s also only $1.99 and has received excellent reviews.

This book is probably best for the person with some programming experience, or someone interested in learning programming. They provide you with all of the scripts you need, but assume you know a bit about how to customize and install and operate them. It would be good for a student, a researcher or a journalist. Web designers will be especially interested in the last chapter.

The word “hacks” in the title needs some explanation. The authors say, “Hacks are generally considered to be quick-n-dirty solutions to programming problems or interesting techniques for getting a task done. . . The idea is . . to show you some tricks for making the best use of a search and show applications of the Google API that perform searches you can’t perform using the regular Google interface.”

The book is organized into 100 hacks, divided into eight chapters.

The first 35 hacks span two chapters and are the part of the book of most interest to non-programmers. This contains all of the specialized tips on using Google.

I didn’t realize that Google does not support the use of the asterisk for stemming. For example, in some search engines you can type moon* and will find moonlight, moonbeam, moonshadow, etc. This won’t work in Google. Google does, however, support the * as a full word wild card. Hold onto that thought.

Another insight for me was that Google has a 10-word search limit. However, the * does not count as one of the 10 words. If I were to look for a quotation, for example, that contained more than 10 words, I could use the * to replace some of the common words (the, and if) to come in under that limit.

I didn’t realize that word order made a difference, or that repeating a word several times will produce different results.

There are also specialized tips on what syntaxes don’t play well together, and specialized syntax for specialized directories, such as news groups, images and phonebooks. I use the image search often and found this to be of particular value.

The tips are very rich, and provide many examples of work-arounds to get you exactly the results you want. No more, no less.

Chapter three provides some non-Google sites that use Google. For example, a company called Capescience has developed a way to send you Google search results via e-mail.

After this, the book becomes more complicated. Last spring Google released its Web API, or Application Programming Interface. In other words, they now allow programmers, using this specific format, to create their own interfaces using the Google data. This is free, although you do have to obtain a developer’s code, also free. The book explains how to do this.

Chapter four is non-API Google applications. Most of this chapter involves scraping, or extracting results from Google and converting them to text files that can be imported into a spreadsheet or database.

The release of the API opened up a host of possibilities. Chapter five gives tips for programming for Google in different languages: PHP, Java, Python, C# and .NET, SOAP, Perl and VB.NET. I am not a programmer. This was over my head, but the explanations of the quirks in various formats seemed insightful and straightforward.

Chapter six gets down to the Web API applications. This includes an explanation of what the program is used for, the code, tips on customizing, and examples of it in use. Again, a programmer would get more out of this than I did but the instructions appeared to be clear and useful.

Chapter seven is goofy: Google pranks and games. A bizarre use of the Google toolbar is to create art. The Google toolbar is a free utility that you install; it is a quicker, more efficient way to search Google (it also can block popup ads – worth it for that alone!) The toolbar highlights search words in your search results. People with too much time on their hands have figured out that they can use this feature to create artwork. They post them to newsgroups. See a portrait here for an example. You need to use the Google toolbar — not plain Google — and search newsgroups.

The hacks book also shows you how to create those shorter links. The REAL link for that page is This is a great technique to use when you are sending links to people via e-mail.

I perked up again with the final chapter. This is hints for Webmasters on getting picked up by Google, getting placed high up in the search results and getting a lot of hits for your page. It includes a great explanation of the mysterious Google page ranking formula.

Google Hacks: 100 Industrial Strength Tips & Tools By Tara Calishain and Rael Dornfest, O’Reilly, retails for $24.95. You can get it at Amazon.Com for $17.47. I’ve put it online in the Alamo PC bookstore. Buy it there and Alamo PC gets a small referral fee.