Contents

INTRODUCTION
A COMPLETE TOUR OF THE GOOGLE WEB SEARCH INTERFACE
SPECIALIZED SEARCH TOOLS
OPTIMAL QUERY TECHNIQUE
THE TECHNOLOGY BEHIND SEARCH
THE WIDE WORLD OF GOOGLE SERVICES
GOOGLE ON MOBILE DEVICES
MANAGING YOUR GOOGLE ACCOUNT AND DATA
SEARCH EXERCISE: MARKET RESEARCH
ADVANCED RESEARCH TACTICS
THE FUTURE OF GOOGLE
APPENDIX A: ADVANCED QUERY STRING PARAMETERS
APPENDIX B: GLOSSARY
 GOOGLE POWER SEARCH
The Essential Guide to Finding Anything Online With Google

Third Edition

Stephan Spencer
KoshKonong, LLC
 Published in Miami, FL on August 3, 2021.

Copyright © 2011-2021 Stephan Spencer.

All rights reserved.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021914959

ISBN (trade paperback): 978-0-9992847-2-8

ISBN (Kindle): 978-0-9992847-3-5

Also available as an Audible audiobook

Introduction
How many times have you searched for something on the Web and not found
it? Probably not too many, but I bet you can remember most (if not all) of
those dead-end searches. You remember them because they were frustrating.
You knew that the information was out there, but you didn’t know the right
magic words to make Google reveal it.
Now think about how many times you’ve searched for something and did
find it—but only after a half hour of sifting through several pages of
misleading results. In the end, was that bit of information worth all the extra
effort?
Imagine what would happen to your productivity if your most challenging
Web searches never failed, and your ordinary Web searches quickly returned
the most relevant results. Over the course of a year, efficient searches and
relevant results could add up to days of recovered time.
In this book, I’ll show you how to start saving time by mastering all aspects
of the Google search engine and its dozens of related services and
technologies. I’ll help you understand how Google processes your query as a
set of keywords, phrases, or natural-language questions; and I’ll teach you
how to use lesser-known search tools, operators, and hidden features to filter
and refine broad result sets.
Google isn’t just a Web search engine. In fact, that would be an objectively
bad way to describe it. Rather, it’s a collection of interconnected products and
services that analyzes, catalogues, stores, and retrieves all of the data and
metadata that it has access to. Yes, it’s Web search… and news search, patent
search, and image and video search. It can search inside print books, old
newspapers, and photographs. It can identify songs, translate text between
dozens of languages, and help you track a package or find a cheap airline
flight.
It’s also Gmail, Chrome, YouTube, and Waze. It’s the Android mobile
operating system, Chromebook notebooks and Pixel smartphones, Fitbit
wearables, and a wide array of connected ‘smart home’ devices. Google sells
music, movies, ebooks, audiobooks, and mobile apps. And behind all of that,
Google is an IT juggernaut that hosts massively scalable cloud computing
resources, and develops cutting-edge machine learning technologies for self-
driving cars, natural language processing, and deep learning.
No matter how well you know Google, I guarantee you’ll learn something
new in Google Power Search, Third Edition. Let’s get started!
 About the Author
Stephan Spencer is an SEO expert, founder of interactive agency Netconcepts
(https://www.netconcepts.com), bestselling author, serial entrepreneur,
Internet luminary, life hacker, podcaster, and contributor to Harvard Business
Review and AdWeek. He has three books published by O’Reilly: The Art of
SEO, Social eCommerce, and Google Power Search. He's optimized the
websites of some of the biggest brands in the world, including Chanel, Volvo,
Sony, and Zappos. Stephan hosts two popular podcast shows: Get Yourself
Optimized (https://www.getyourselfoptimized.com) and Marketing Speak
(https://www.marketingspeak.com/).
Other Contributors
Jem Matzan is an author, ghostwriter, and award-winning audiobook
narrator based in Orlando, Florida. You can contact him at:
https://www.jemmatzan.com
Dan Reno is a digital marketer with specialization in SEO and Google
Analytics. Since 2004, he has consulted with companies of all sizes,
including Fortune 500. Dan’s mission is to bring enterprise-level
sophistication with SEO and Analytics to small and mid-size businesses. He
is also the founder of Slope Analytics, Inc. (slope-analytics.com), which
specializes in analytics solutions for online retailers using the Shopify,
BigCommerce and WooCommerce platforms. You can contact him at:
https://www.danreno.com
Detlef Johnson is the SEO for Developers Expert for Search Engine Land
and SMX. He is also a member of the programming team for SMX events
and writes the SEO for Developers series on Search Engine Land. In addition
to work for Search Engine Land and SMX, Detlef recently joined the ranks of
ninjas working at InternetMarketingNinjas.com. Detlef is one of the original
group of pioneering webmasters who established the professional SEO field
more than 20 years ago. Since then he has worked for major search engine
technology providers, managed programming and marketing teams for
Chicago Tribune, and consulted for numerous entities including Fortune 500
companies. Detlef has a strong understanding of technical SEO and a passion
for Web programming.
Charity Glade writes environmental planning documents and technical
literature for federal agencies. She is a field botanist and certified Northwest
Lichenologist. She graduated magna cum laude from Oregon State University
with a science degree minoring in research, and she is the proud mother of
three smart, compassionate, and funny young men.
In Memorium
Shortly before the publication of the third edition of this book, Hamlet Batista
passed away due to COVID-19. Hamlet was my friend, colleague, and a
technical editor and contributor to the previous editions of Google Power
Search and The Art of SEO.
Hamlet has long been an inspiration to so many, and the entire SEO industry
grieves his loss. He made significant contributions related to Python, AI, and
SEO. He taught me a lot and helped my business immensely in the previous
decade.
I could go on about his intellectual and technical brilliance, but I feel it’s
more important to say that Hamlet is a pure and beautiful soul full of love,
generosity, kindness, friendship, and joy. Rest assured, consciousness
survives the body. Hamlet is not ‘gone,’ only transformed back into the non-
physical, as we all have been before and shall be again. Death is a door we
walk through countless times. Hamlet, I love you and I pray for your soul’s
elevation.
Until I see you again, my dear friend.
 Language and Formatting Conventions Used in This
Book
Search operators, interface options, and new technical terms are in bold.
Simple search queries are in italics.
Complex queries are in codeblocks, which have indented line wraps so that you can more easily
see when there’s a line break.
 A Note About the Audio Edition
The Audible audio edition of this book contains all of the narrative from the
Kindle and print editions. Screen shots, complex query examples, the
glossary, and the table of advanced query string parameters near the end of
the book are not read aloud. To download a supplemental PDF that includes
the unspoken material, go to Audible.com, log in with your Amazon
credentials, then click on My Library. Find the row for Google Power
Search, then click the View PDF link in the Other Actions column.
I hope that you will enjoy the audiobook on your commute, or while cooking,
gardening, exercising, walking the dog, or in whatever else your preferred
listening context may be. When you hear something that you want to explore
further, just tap the bookmark icon in the Audible app, and you’ll be able to
easily come back to that point later when it’s safe and convenient.
 Publication History
Google Power Search: The Essential Guide to Finding Anything Online With
Google was originally published by O’Reilly Media in January 2011, and
was last updated in May 2014.
The Second Edition was first published by Koshkonong in November 2017,
and was last updated in April 2019.
The Third Edition, also published by Koshkonong, was released in August
2021 and is still in its initial release.
The content in this book was last updated in August 2021. To see a
changelog from the previous release, go to:
https://powersearchbook.com
 How to Get Free Updates to This Book
Search technology changes rapidly, and Google usually prefers to let people
discover those changes on their own instead of announcing them ahead of
time. I make note of any new Google information whenever I become aware
of it, and when the list is long enough, I initiate a surgical content update of
Google Power Search. This happens at least once per year, sometimes twice.
When there are major changes, or I want to alter the structure of the book,
then I produce a new edition with a new cover and ISBN.
I want you to always have the most recent version of Google Power Search,
Third Edition. There’s nothing I can reasonably do to update books that have
already been printed, but the Kindle and Audible editions can be
automatically updated for free whenever I make changes. To ensure that
future updates are automatically pushed to your Kindle apps and devices,
follow this process:
1. Go to www.amazon.com and log in.
2. In the Account & Lists menu, click on Manage Your Content and
Devices.
3. Click the Settings tab.
4. Ensure that Device Synchronization and Automatic Book Update are
both set to ON.
In your Audible app, you can retrieve updated content by using the Refresh
function in My Library.
 Republishing Excerpts
In general you may republish short excerpts from this book with attribution.
You do not need to contact me for permission unless you’re reproducing a
significant portion of the book. For example, including a three-paragraph
excerpt in your blog post does not require permission. Offering a sample
chapter of the book on your website, or incorporating a significant amount of
content from this book into your product’s documentation does require
permission.
I prefer that attributions include the title, author, and ASIN or ISBN. For
example:
Google Power Search: The Essential Guide to Finding Anything Online With
Google, Third Edition by Stephan Spencer. Copyright 2011-2021 Stephan
Spencer, ISBN: 978-0-9992847-2-8.”
If you feel your use of this book’s material exceeds ‘fair use’ or the
permission given above, feel free to contact me via one of the methods listed
in the next section.
 How to Contact the Author
Please address comments and questions concerning this book to:
Stephan Spencer
6516 Monona Drive, Unit 114
Madison, WI 53716
608-729-5910 (phone)
503-217-8135 (fax)
Google Power Search has a website that contains a changelog from the
previous edition, and a blog with excerpts and examples:
https://www.powersearchbook.com
To comment or ask technical questions about this book, send email to:
stephan@stephanspencer.com
For more information about my other books, online courses, seminars, and
articles, visit my official site or connect with me on social media:
Official website: https://www.stephanspencer.com
Facebook: https://facebook.com/stephanspencerseo
Twitter: https://twitter.com/sspencer
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/stephanspencer
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephanspencer
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/stephanspencer
A Complete Tour of the Google Web
Search Interface
Google’s Web search interface is simple, sparse, and easy to use, but there
are many useful options and features hidden in plain sight. No matter how
tech-savvy you are, or how many times you’ve used Google, I guarantee this
chapter has at least one thing (and probably several) that you didn’t already
know about its Web search interface.
 The Google.com Query Page
First I’m going to quickly describe the features on the main Google.com Web
search page, starting from the top, moving from left to right:
About: A direct link to the https://about.google site, which tells you
about Google’s mission, shows recent social media content from
Google employees, and advertises the latest Google products and
features.
Store: A direct link to the https://store.google.com site, where
Google sells its latest hardware products.
Gmail: A direct link to the Gmail service at https://mail.google.com.
Images: This takes you to the Google Images query page, where
you can search for photos and illustrations.
More: The grey dotted square icon opens a menu that leads to many
other Google sites and services such as YouTube, Google Drive, and
Google News.
Google account (or Sign In): This will be a tiny round icon of your
Google account photo if you’ve specified one. If you click on it,
you’ll see basic information about your Google account, options to
switch among other Google accounts (for instance, between personal
and business accounts), and a link to the account configuration page.
The Google Doodle: This is the image above the search query field.
By default it’s the standard Google logo, but on most days it’s
stylized to celebrate a holiday; anniversary of a historical event;
birthday of a famous scientist, artist, or engineer; or to bring
awareness to a charitable cause. If you hover the mouse cursor over
it, the alt text will explain today’s theme. Clicking on it usually takes
you to a search result page for the Doodle subject, though sometimes
you can find hidden animations or sounds by clicking on certain
parts of the image. The Google Doodle is region-specific, so
depending on where you are, you can see a different image than
someone else. Occasionally you’ll just see the normal Google logo,
and below the query field there will be a link to a video or article on
whatever or whomever Google is celebrating today.
Voice search: If you are using the Google Chrome browser and
have a microphone connected and properly configured, you’ll see a
microphone icon on the right side of the search query field. If you
click on it, Google will convert whatever you say into the mic into a
text search query.
I’m Feeling Lucky: If you’ve typed anything into the search field,
this button will bypass the Google search results page and jump
straight to the first result. If the search field is blank and you hover
the mouse cursor over the I’m Feeling Lucky button, it will change
from “I’m Feeling Lucky” to other interesting and amusing options,
such as “I’m feeling trendy” (which leads to search results that are
currently trending upward), or “I’m feeling hungry” (which leads to
a search for restaurants), or some other interesting or amusing aspect
of Google’s search services.
Advertising: A direct link to the https://ads.google.com site, where
you can learn about buying ad space on Google properties and on
third-party AdSense partner sites.
Business: This leads to a landing page that explains Google’s
business-focused products and services, including advertising,
Google Workspace and Google Cloud Platform subscriptions, and
traffic analysis tools.
How Search Works: This is a quick, plain-language guided tour
that explains how Web search works.
Carbon neutral since 2007: A link to a page on the
https://sustainability.google site that explains Google’s efforts to
combat climate change.
Privacy: A direct link to the privacy policy section of the
https://policies.google.com site.
Terms: A direct link to the terms of service section of the
https://policies.google.com site.
Settings: When you click on this, a menu appears with several
options related to search preferences, advanced search options, some
links to the https://myactivity.google.com site to see your search
history and other data that Google has collected about your search
 activity, a link to the https://support.google.com site for Web search
documentation, and a link to a feedback form. There’s more
information on these settings later in this chapter, and in the
“Managing Your Google Account and Data” chapter.
Advanced Search
The Advanced Search page (available in the Settings menu) enables you to
refine your search by using an online form. This isn’t any different than using
search operators in your query (you’ll learn more about those later in this
book), but it’s a slower and more abstract process.
Search Settings
You can alter some of the default features of the results page through the
Search settings screen, which is in the Settings menu on both the query and
result pages.
You can change the number of results displayed per page (the default is 10),
set your preferred language for search results (the default is set to your
locale), turn off SafeSearch filters to include potentially sensitive content in
your results (such as nudity, sex, profanity, and violence), and you can erase
your search history.
Google Autocomplete
As you type a query into the search field, Google Autocomplete will display
a drop-down list of guesses as to what the query might be when you finish
typing. This can be useful when you don’t know the exact spelling of part of
your query, or if you aren’t sure that you’re asking the right question or using
the right keywords.
Google Autocomplete is composed of a collection of previous search queries,
starting with those executed by you (if you’re signed into your Google
account), followed by queries executed by other people (in order of
popularity). Your previous queries will be in purple text at the top of the
Autocomplete dialogue, and other popular queries will follow in blue.
When there are multiple conflicting results in Google Autocomplete, it will
put an emdash after the word, followed by a topic or category. For instance, if
you type in the word bread, Google Autocomplete will give you an option for
bread – food and bread – band. If you choose one of those, Google will put
the disambiguation in parenthesis for you when it shows the query on the
result page. For instance: bread (food) or bread (band).
So if you search for bread, and choose the disambiguation bread – food, then
Google Autocomplete will not ask for a disambiguation again on subsequent
queries that begin with the word bread. Instead, it will list your
disambiguated query of bread (food) at the top in purple letters, followed by
the most common search queries that begin with the word bread.
 The Search Result Page (SERP)
When you type in or speak a search query, then click or tap the Google
Search button or magnifying glass icon, the Google homepage transforms
into a search result page (abbreviated as SERP). The SERP has a few extra
features beyond the query page.
All: This is the default search scope, which gives priority to
webpages, but also includes results from other Google services if
they’re highly relevant to the query.
Images: Applies your query to the Google Images search engine.
News: Applies your query to the Google News service.
Videos: Limits the search scope to webpages that contain embedded
videos relevant to the query, and videos hosted on services like
YouTube and Vimeo.
Shopping: Applies your query to the Google Shopping search
engine.
More: This is a drop-down menu containing links to other
specialized search engines such as Maps, Books, Flights, and
Finance.
Settings: Contains options that enable you to alter the number of
search results displayed per page, and change the language of
Google’s interface; and a link to the Advanced Search page.
Tools: Contains filtering options for age (how long a page has been
indexed by Google), and a switch that specifies whether or not all of
the words in the query should be treated as a verbatim phrase. Other
Google search services have extra options here. For instance, image
search can filter by color, size, type, and usage rights; video search
has the ability to filter by video quality, duration, source, and closed-
captioning; and news search tools include the ability to sort by
relevance, and to include or exclude blogs.
Spelling corrections: If you misspell a word in your query, or if a
similar word would yield different results, Google automatically
suggests more popular/likely spellings, but also gives you the option
to search for your literal query.
Related searches: At the bottom of the first page of results is a list
of similar queries that others have recently executed.
 Anatomy of a Search Result
Every item in a search result set has at least three elements: a title, URL, and
some kind of snippet. Each of these concepts are explained in the subsections
below.
The Title
Google gives more weight to pages that have an HTML <title> element that
contains a concise and accurate description of the content, is unique to the
site, and isn’t stuffed with keywords (keyword is a technical term for a word
or phrase that defines or refines the context of a search query). Usually the
title portion of the snippet is exactly what’s in the <title> element.
If a page does not have a <title> element, then Google will attempt to
generate an appropriate title based on the page’s content.
The URL
Below the title is the URL, which is either the full Web address of the page,
or a breadcrumb trail that shows where a page resides in a site’s directory
structure or content hierarchy.
Web address URLs are static, but a breadcrumb trail can change with the
context of the search. Three different search queries might show three
different breadcrumbs for the same page, depending on how the site’s
breadcrumb schema is designed.
Cached Pages
On the right side of the URL is a More menu (three vertical dots). If you
click on that, Google shows a popup dialogue titled ‘About this result.’ This
contains basic information about the site, such as a summary of its content
and a link to the appropriate Wikipedia entry for its owners, or the date when
this page was first added to the Google index. At the bottom of the dialogue
is a Cached button. Clicking on it leads you to a static, archived snapshot of
the page as appeared the last time Google indexed it. Google also puts an
overlay interface at the top of the cached page that enables you to switch to
older snapshots, if they exist.
There are a few reasons why you’d want to view a cached version of a page.
Most commonly it’s because the site is temporarily down, or the page has
been permanently moved or deleted. It can also be useful for getting past
paywalls and logins, but only if the page content is visible to Google. Some
sites use clever JavaScript tricks to allow Google to index a page’s content,
but they overlay a paywall or login dialogue when human visitors are
detected. Cached copies of those pages won’t look pretty, but they’ll be
readable, and most of the time that’s good enough.
A cached page highlights all instances of your search terms, and provides a
timestamp that shows when it was last indexed by Google. Sometimes you
won’t find any of the search terms in a cached page because they aren’t
actually in the page’s content, but they are used in the anchor text of
incoming links. When that happens, a message will appear at the top of the
screen that says: “these words only appear in links to this page.”
Cached pages are static, so dynamic elements won’t appear, and the page will
probably look like a mess. It’s also going to load slowly because the Google
cache is a low-priority service. One way to make cached pages load more
quickly is to remove all of the images from the page. To do that, click on the
Text-only version link in the Google cache overlay at the top, or append the
&strip=1 parameter to the Google cache URL.
In rare instances, there may not be a cached version of a page. This can
happen when a page is so new that there is no old version to show, or when
webmasters specifically prohibit Google from creating cached copies of
certain pages.
Similar Pages
In addition to Cached, trusted, high-traffic sites may have a second option in
the URL menu: Similar. If you click it, you’ll see a list of websites that
Google believes are topically similar to this one. For example,
SingularityHub is a blog that posts content about artificial intelligence,
robotics, and the robot singularity. If you search for one of those topics and
see a result for SingularityHub, then click the URL arrow and select Similar,
you’ll see a list of other blogs that cover the same topic.
The Similar feature is only available for certain sites in the results list, but
you can force it to work with any site in the Google index by using the
related: operator, which is explained in more detail in the “Optimal Query
Technique” chapter later in this book.
The Snippet
The snippet is the block of text that represents or summarizes a page’s
content. It is dynamically generated by Google at the time of the query, and
will change depending on the nature of the search, though the descriptive
paragraph is rarely longer than 300 characters. Snippets are composed of the
page title, the page content (in various places), and its HTML <meta>
description tags.
For results that have a high level of authority, Google may create a featured
snippet instead of a regular one. A featured snippet usually has a larger text
excerpt, and it appears above the link instead of below it. You’re more likely
to see featured snippets when your search query is in the form of a question,
or if you’re searching from a mobile device.
Sponsored Results
Sometimes a few of the top results are ads, and are clearly marked as such.
These are part of the Google Ads service, which is the company’s primary
revenue stream. Google advertisers bid against each other to be positioned
there, and are charged every time someone clicks on their link. The best ad
placements go to the highest bidders, but Google will demote ads with low
clickthrough rates (CTRs) in favor of more relevant ones.
Maps for Local Results
If your query includes a location or a type of business or service that typically
has a physical storefront or office, the SERP will include some extra
information from the Google Maps and Google My Business services (both
of which are explained in more detail in later chapters).
For example, the query electricians in Scranton would return a small map
graphic from Google Maps with pins showing the location of relevant results
in that area, followed by a list of three top-rated local results according to
Google My Business, followed by the regular Web search results. The group
of three listings underneath the map is sometimes referred to as the map
pack, and it accounts for a large percentage of clicks.
Special Features
Websites that implement Google-compliant structured data elements may
have one or more interesting special features in search results. Because they
contain unique visual elements that stand out from normal results, and
because they can appear in different places on the SERP, searchers are much
more likely to look at results with these special features before anything else:
Sitelinks searchbox: This is a search field that sometimes appears
below a snippet. If Google determines that a broad query is likely to
lead to a second query on a site that has its own integrated search
engine, then Google will try to pre-empt that second search by
providing a search field with a site-limited scope. This often
happens when someone uses a URL or a well-known brand or site
name as a search query. For instance, if you search for pinterest,
Google will provide a sitelinks searchbox under the top result for
pinterest.com.
Rich result: In lieu of a snippet, some search results can display an
image thumbnail or review star rating. This is typically for results
where the rich element is an important part of the content, such as
pages that contain reviews of books or movies, or interviews with
celebrities.
Carousel: If there are multiple pages on a site that are similar and
contain rich results, Google may choose to display them in a
horizontal carousel.
Enriched result: When search results for job postings, recipes, or
event listings lead to pages that contain interactive elements, Google
may add some of that functionality to a rich result.
 Hidden SERP Features
Sometimes a SERP contains special features that aren’t ‘search results’ in the
traditional sense because they either don’t lead to a webpage, or they are
interfaces for other Google services. Google refers to most of these SERP
features as OneBox results.
There’s one exception: Knowledge Panels. These are amalgamations of facts
and images pulled from one or more trusted sources. Knowledge Panels only
appear when you search for something that matches an entity in the Google
Knowledge Graph, which is explained in more detail in “The Technology
Behind Search” chapter later in this book.
Airline Route Information
If you search for flights to Philadelphia, you will get a table of outbound
flights to Philadelphia’s largest airport (PHL) from an array of popular
origins. You can switch this around and find out what flights are outbound
from PHL by searching for flights from Philadelphia instead. Lastly, you can
specify both an origin and a destination, and if non-stop flights exist between
those two points, Google will provide a OneBox card with the airlines, flight
numbers, and departure and arrival times.
These features are part of the specialized Google Flights search engine, which
you can access directly at:
https://www.google.com/flights
Distance, Travel Time, and Directions
Google can do all kinds of things with addresses and maps. If you search for
a street address, Google will show you a OneBox card that contains a map of
the surrounding area, and a snapshot of the view from the street (if there is
one). If you search for a ZIP code, you’ll get a similar card, but with more
information about the area.
If you search for distance from Vancouver to Seattle, you will get directions
(via car, public transportation, walking, or biking) and a travel time estimate,
based on current Google Maps data.
Easter Eggs
Google engineers like to hide whimsical features and jokes in some of the
products they work on, especially the main search engine. Try searching for
one of these terms in Google and see what happens:
askew
anagram
recursion
the loneliest number
Google in 1998
the answer to life, the universe, and everything
Bletchley Park
Festivus
blink HTML
Conway’s Game of Life
flip a coin
roll a die
play dreidel
spinner
Google Pac-man
once in a blue moon
fun facts
tic-tac-toe
solitaire
is Google down?
Wizard of Oz (on the results page, click the ruby slippers in the info
card on the right, then click the tornado when you’re ready to return
to Oz)
There have also been some Easter eggs in the search engines of other Google
services (most notably YouTube), but most of them have been retired.
There’s one on the Google Play site that still works, though: click on the
search button without typing anything into the search field, and the results
will reflect the influence of your spirit animal.
Experimental Features
Google is constantly developing new features and services, and it almost
never waits for any of them to be ‘done’ before making them available to
users. Sometimes Google engineers will introduce a new feature into an
existing service without much (if any) warning, test it for a while to see if and
how people are using it, then either change or remove it later. Individual
features can appear, disappear, or change names and locations in an instant.
However, when complete services are shut down, Google makes an
announcement ahead of time, then phases it out so that users can transition to
something else.
In order to manage adoption scalability, Google sometimes makes new
services available on an invitation-only basis. If you aren’t extremely well-
connected in the IT world, you might not get an invitation to a new service
until it goes mainstream. (The most notable examples of this practice were
Gmail and Google+).
If a new feature isn’t introduced and activated by default in its services,
Google will put it into an experimental area so that users can find it on their
own and choose to try it out. Each service has its own experimental or labs
area. At any given time, you may find some interesting and useful features
there.
Find Events
If you search for events in a specific city or venue, or events near me if
Google has access to your location, you’ll see a special results page that
displays all available information about upcoming events at or near that
location.
Find a Hotel
If you search for a hotel in a certain area (or use your current location by
querying for hotels near me), Google combines information from services
like Google My Business and Google Maps, and creates a special interface to
compare the results in terms of distance, price, availability, and review
ratings. You can even book a room directly from the results page, if that hotel
offers online bookings.
This is similar to a Google Maps search for hotels.
Find a Job
Google has a special search interface for employment opportunities. You can
search by location:
jobs in Miami
or locally, if Google has access to your location data:
jobs near me
or by job title:
software engineering jobs

Find Your IP Address

If you want to know your public IP address, use the query: what is my IP
address.
The region that corresponds to this IP address is what Google will use to
determine your location if you’re on a device that doesn’t have a GPS, and if
you haven’t set a specific location in your Google account. If you’re using a
proxy server or VPN, then your IP address won’t indicate your true location,
and Google might get the wrong idea about where you are and what you
might be searching for.
Health Issues
Because of the potential impact on public health and safety, Google takes
searches for health issues more seriously than most other topics.
Searching for diseases and medical conditions will often return a knowledge
panel on the right side of the results page. It shows a list of quick facts,
including how common the disease is, its symptoms, risk factors, methods of
transmission, requirements for diagnosis, and how it can be treated and
prevented, along with links to highly trusted sites where you can learn more.
Searching from a mobile device might go one step further. For instance, if
you search for clinical depression from the Google mobile app, you’ll get the
same knowledge panel as you would in a desktop search, plus a link to the
PHQ-9 questionnaire created by the National Alliance on Mental Illness. If
you take the questionnaire and your answers suggest a potential mental health
issue, you’ll get more information about how to find qualified treatment near
you.
In March 2020, the sudden, extremely high search volume pertaining to the
COVID-19 coronavirus inspired some bad actors to create scams and spread
misleading information on the Web in the midst of a global health crisis. In
response, Google publicly announced a special set of content and
monetization restrictions in Android apps, YouTube videos, and Web search
results involving coronavirus-related keywords; and created a special,
heavily-vetted, non-monetized SERP for COVID-19 queries.
Local Information
You can use a location name or other identifier just like any other search
term, but there are several special OneBox results for certain kinds of local
queries.
If you’re searching from a mobile device, Google always assumes that you’re
looking for information close to your current location (this topic is covered in
more detail in the “Google on Mobile Devices” chapter later in this book).
Sometimes, though, you may want to look up local information about a
completely different place. For example, Google will display the local time,
date, and weather for any location on Earth with queries such as:
weather in London
time in EST
The OneBox results for these queries are adjusted for the time zone and
daylight savings rules that apply to that location. You can specify a city and
country name, time zone, or postal code.
When searching for weather, Google returns OneBox results with current
weather conditions and a four-day forecast. You can also find out when the
sunrise and sunset will happen. For example:
sunset in Key West
sunrise in Anchorage
Google will also return movie listings for queries such as:
movies playing Friday in Phoenix
movies in Orlando tonight
When you click on the first result in a movie search, the enriched result page
will sort by movie, genre, day, time, and theater.
When you use the word near in a query, Google includes local information in
the results. For example, the query burgers near Fenway Park shows several
rich results for burger restaurants that are close in proximity to Fenway Park
in Boston, Massachusetts.
If you use the words near me in a query, Google will use your current
geographic location to filter results for the closest businesses, services, or
attractions.
Mathematics, Conversions, and Scientific Calculator
Enter any valid mathematical expression in the search box, and Google will
solve it for you.
You can also search for scientific calculator to bring up an interactive
calculator. If you need syntax or function documentation, click the More info
link below the calculator app.
Google can also solve geometric functions. For example, use the search
phrase solve for circle to get a OneBox result that calculates the area of a
circle based on the specified radius.
If you want to know how to pronounce a very large number, just use that
number in a search query followed by =english (with no spaces) and you’ll
get an information card that shows you how to pronounce and spell that
number in English.
You can also query for currency and measurement conversions, such as 100
dollars in euros, or 8 ounces in cups.
Metronome
If you search for metronome, Google will provide a basic metronome app
above the result list.
Nutrition Information
How much fat is in soy milk? Ask Google, and it will display a custom result
page that shows the answer in a common quantity, along with drop-down
boxes that let you change the variety of food, and the unit of measure.
For instance, how much fat is in soy milk will return a card that says: 4.3
grams of fat per cup (or 243 grams) of plain soy milk. The drop-down menus
give you options to specify a certain kind of soy milk (soy chai, chocolate soy
milk, soy nog, etc.) and a different standard unit of measure (1 fluid ounce,
100 grams). Complete USDA nutrition information is shown in a pane on the
right side of the results page.
Research a 4-Year University
If you search for the name of a specific accredited 4-year university such as
Columbia University or University of Rochester, Google provides a custom
result page for it that helps you learn more about admissions policies, student
life, and tuition cost.
Timer and Stopwatch
Need to count down a certain amount of time? In a regular Google search
query, use the word timer followed by a reasonable amount of time in hours,
minutes, or seconds, and Google will give you a special card that shows the
time remaining. When the timer expires, an alarm beeps until you click OK
(you can adjust the alarm sound level by clicking the speaker icon).
The Timer card has a second tab for a Stopwatch (which you can also find
by searching for stopwatch), which works exactly the way you expect it to.
Tip Calculator
Want to know what you should leave for a tip at a restaurant or bar? Just
search for tip calculator, and Google will provide one. You can adjust the
number of guests, the percentage, and the amount of the pre-tip bill.
Tracking and Translating Alphanumeric IDs
Google will attempt to interpret a query term that appears to be an
alphanumeric ID, such as: a telephone area code, ZIP code, patent number,
ISBN, FAA airplane registration number, UPC code, or FCC Equipment ID.
For instance, enter a valid package tracking ID into Google and it will return
tracking information from the carrier. Or enter an airline and flight number,
and Google will return flight times. Google will even return information
about a car’s history if you use a VIN (vehicle information number) as a
query.
Translate This Page
The Translate this page link only appears in search results next to pages that
are in a foreign language and have no alternate version for the language
you’ve specified in your search settings. When you click on it, Google will
use its translation engine to convert the page text to your language. It’s rarely
perfect—it struggles with idiomatic phrases and bad grammar in the source
content—but you can usually get the gist of it.
Specialized Search Tools
The Internet is more than just the World Wide Web. While the main Google
Web search engine is always a good starting point for complex searches, in
certain circumstances it doesn’t return the best results. If you’re looking for
something that may not strictly be on a webpage—a video, image, or book,
for instance—or if you want to limit the search index to a specific content
type such as images or patents, then it might be best to start your search with
one of the specialized search tools listed below.
 Google Alerts
https://www.google.com/alerts
This is the digital equivalent to an old-style news clipping service. It will
send you an email containing the newest search results (including Web, news,
blogs, video, books, finance, and discussions) for any query or keywords you
specify. Many people use Google Alerts to inform them of new results
pertaining to their name, company, products, and competitors.
 Google Books
https://books.google.com
Google Books is a massive initiative to digitize offline print content. Its index
contains millions of books that have been submitted by tens of thousands of
publishers and authors.
When you search Google Books, the results page is a list of books that
contain your search terms. When you click on the book title, you’ll go
directly to the first page in the book that contains those terms, and they’ll be
highlighted so that you can easily find them. All other parts of the book that
contain those terms are marked in the scrollbar on the right side of the book
viewer. Unless the book is in the public domain, you won’t be able to read
more than the few pages that contain your search terms.
Talk to Books
https://books.google.com/talktobooks
This is a Google Research project that enables you to use a natural language
query to search inside of a limited subset of the Google Books project. It’s an
interesting way to ask questions that have broad answers across multiple
trusted sources. Some good queries for Talk to Books might be:
When did Rome fall?
How can I stop thinking and fall asleep?
What policies can help the middle class in America?
The results page shows a list of books that Google’s semantic AI believes
contain relevant answers to your query. Each result shows the book’s title,
author, publication date, and an excerpt that concisely answers your plain-
language question. Click on the (view in book) link at the end of the excerpt
to skip to that page in the book.
 Google Code
https://code.google.com
This service enables you to search inside of all available open source
software code. You can refine the results by language, license, and package
format.
Google Code is an element of Google Developers, a community resource for
website designers, developers, and admins.
 Google Flights and ITA Matrix Airfare Search
https://www.google.com/flights
https://matrix.itasoftware.com
Google Flights shows you airline travel information between any two
airports, and how each flight price changes depending on the day, time, and
round-trip duration that you specify. This is an excellent tool for finding
options for vacation destinations, assuming you’re open to vacationing
wherever the cheapest flights are going; and for finding the most economical
dates and times to travel to a certain location (such as visiting relatives or
going to Walt Disney World).
The ITA Matrix Airfare Search is similar to Google Flights, but focuses on
one specific destination and specific travel dates, and creates a matrix of
flight options. Matrix Airfare Search has a unique feature that shows a
calendar of lowest fares for a specific date range. However, it does not link
directly to an airline or booking agency, so you’ll have to make note of the
flight code, then do a regular Web search for it to discover which airline it is.
Airlines may not directly sell tickets at the prices that you see in Google
Flights or Matrix Airfare Search; instead, you may have to use a discount
booking service like Priceline or Travelocity, or a travel agency.
Flight pricing can vary significantly according to where you’re searching
from, and which national currency you’re using for pricing. Flight fares that
are not priced in Euros or US Dollars (or any currency pegged to them) may
be lower due to latent changes in values. However, trying to get a cheaper
flight by purchasing it in a volatile or obscure currency may prove to be a
lengthy process with a lot of hassles, and end up saving you only a small
amount of money after all of the fees are calculated.
 Google Images
https://images.google.com
This is a special index and set of search algorithms dedicated to photos and
drawings. Google combines traditional metadata such as size, resolution,
location, and file format; and advanced AI-derived metadata such as subject
matter, text, and predominant colors.
If Google determines that an image is related to a product for sale on an e-
commerce site, a cooking or baking recipe, or a video, it will add a special
icon to the lower left corner of the thumbnail to indicate which one.
Advanced Image Search
https://images.google.com/advanced_image_search
The Advanced Image Search page enables you to refine your search by size,
color, file type, image type, usage rights, and region. These settings persist
beyond your current search. If you don’t want to permanently change your
image search settings, or if you want to adjust a query that has already been
executed, you can append the imgtype parameter to your search URL (using
the ampersand as a separator) with the following sorting options:
&imgtype=face
&imgtype=news
&imgtype=photo
&imgtype=clipart
&imgtype=lineart

If there are a lot of image results, Google will show you a row of related
keywords at the top of the results. When you click on an image, you’ll also
get a small number of suggested Related images.
You can also conduct a reverse image search by uploading an image and
asking Google to look for similar images. To do this, click the gray camera
icon on the right side of the search field.
When you upload or link to an image, the result page looks a lot different
than with a regular image search. Whether the image is found or not, Google
lists keywords that may apply to it, and shows images that are similar to
yours. If the image is found on the Web, you’ll get a list of pages where
they’re used, and available sizes. Be careful, though; once you upload an
image, Google will add it and all its metadata to the search index.
The Chrome mobile Web browser also has a feature that can perform a quick
image search. Just touch and hold an image on a webpage, and select Search
Google for this image from the context menu. From there, you’ll go directly
to the image search results.
 Google Maps
You probably already know that Google Maps provides step-by-step
navigation to any given destination, but it has a lot of value beyond simple
driving directions. It’s also a great way to find local businesses or services,
and to explore an unfamiliar area before you arrive there on a business trip or
vacation. It’s especially handy when you’re looking for restaurants within
walking distance from your current location.
Google Maps can interpret location input in several different ways. You can
search using a city name; the name of a company; a public business or
building name such as Starbucks or Rockefeller Center; business types such
as post office or pizzeria; approximate addresses such as broadway and 92nd
street New York City; specific addresses such as 931 e. main st madison wi;
or a combination of the above, such as hotels near LAX.
Maps also lets you specify latitude and longitude coordinates. This is useful
when you want to navigate to a location that doesn’t have a name or address,
or a specific area within a very large venue like a convention center or
football stadium.
When you find what you’re looking for, Maps can give you directions to it on
foot, via public transportation, by bike, and by car. If it’s a business, Maps
can tell you if it’s currently open, and what its hours of operation are.
If you search for a business type and get multiple results, you can filter them
by price, Google My Business rating, hours of operation (including whether
it’s currently open), and vacancy (for hotels).
You can mark a location as a favorite by clicking the star icon next to its
Maps listing, which is handy for saving your favorite restaurants, or the home
addresses of friends and family members. If you specify Home and Work
locations, Google can use local traffic data to tell you how long your
commute will be, and when you should leave to arrive on time. Like all other
Google search properties, Maps saves your search history, which makes it
easy to find previous locations that you haven’t marked as favorites.
You can even conduct keyword searches that are restricted to the map region
displayed on your screen. For all matching businesses, Google will return a
Google My Business listing on the left, and put a pinpoint on the map on the
right. You can zoom out to expand the search area.
Street View and Satellite View
Google Maps shows a vector map by default, but you can switch to a satellite
image by clicking or tapping on the Satellite thumbnail image, or by
selecting it from the More menu.
Many areas are also available in Street View mode, which is composed of
ground-level panoramic photos taken from a specially equipped vehicle. To
enable Street View, click the little yellow stick figure icon, or select Street
View from the More menu.
All view modes allow you to pan and zoom around an area to see what else is
nearby, or what the neighborhood is like.
Google Maps Timeline
https://www.google.com/maps/timeline
If you have Location History enabled in your Google account (which is
covered in detail in the “Managing Your Google Account and Data” chapter
later in this book), Google Maps will create a Timeline page for you that
connects your location history with images in Google Photos to create a
digital scrapbook of your travels.
The Timeline page is only visible to you. It’s updated every time your
location history changes, and goes as far back as you allow. If you don’t like
this feature, you can disable it in your Google account. If you absolutely love
this feature, then you’ll enjoy fine-tuning your timeline by verifying photo
locations, stops, and the method of travel. The default is usually ‘driving,’ but
there’s a long list of other options you can choose for each segment of the
journey, such as walking, kayaking, riding in a gondola, and even ‘catching a
Pokemon.’
At intervals (but at least once per year), Google will send you an email with a
link to your Timeline page, and some interesting facts and statistics about
your location history in the recent past, such as how many cities you’ve
visited, how many total miles you’ve travelled, and pictures and videos you
took while you were there.
Waze
https://waze.com
Waze is a site and app that focuses on driving directions, traffic routing, and
carpooling. It’s really more of a social network for commuters than it is a
mapping tool. It’s not part of Google Maps, but it is a Google property (it was
acquired by Google’s parent company, Alphabet, in 2013), and some of its
features and traffic data have been integrated into Google Maps over the past
few years.
Waze does still have some unique search functionality that Google Maps
doesn’t. Specifically, the ability to search for carpools among other Waze
users in your area, and for road construction zones and traffic hazards that
could cause delays or unsafe driving conditions.
 Google News
https://news.google.com
Google News is an aggregation service that shows top headlines and stories
in a variety of categories from a wide range of news sources, including:
broadcast and cable news networks, newswires, magazines, newspapers, and
academic journals. The results heavily favor original reporting, which
reduces the clutter of mashups and clickbait sites, and increases the credit and
credibility of professional journalists and their publishers.
You can limit your news search results to a certain timeframe by clicking the
down arrow on the right side of the news search field, then clicking
Anytime. The dropdown list has options for past hour, past 24 hours, past
week, and past year. There may be substantial variance between result sets
for past hour and past 24 hours, so unless you’re only searching for
breaking news, you should try both options.
If you are already on a Web search result page, click the News link at the top
of the page to switch to Google News results for that query. Google News
results are also occasionally embedded automatically in the main Web search
results.
Google News also has an extensive archive of digitized print newspapers,
some going as far back as the 18th century, at this URL:
https://news.google.com/newspapers
 Google Patent Search
https://www.google.com/patents
This service enables you to search through the millions of registered and
pending patents in the US Patent and Trademark Office archives. It’s
considerably more useful than the search function on the official USPTO site.
 Google Scholar
https://scholar.google.com
This search engine is specific to legal and peer-reviewed academic journals,
which includes case law, patents, and scientific studies. Usually this kind of
content would be behind a paywall, but Google has worked with publishers to
gain access to a lot of gated content. Some results only display the abstract
for free, and require a subscription to read the entire paper.
Search results displayed in Google Scholar each have a cited by link which
lists all publications that reference that paper.
 Google Search Console
https://search.google.com/search-console
The Google Search Console provides powerful tools and analytics that help
webmasters make their sites as Google-friendly as possible. It shows you
how search engine activity affects traffic to individual content pages, enables
you to request indexation of individual URLs or entire XML sitemaps, and
tests your site for mobile usability and Accelerated Mobile Page (AMP)
validation.
The Core Web Vitals feature uses real-world data to test your site from both
mobile and desktop user perspectives, then generates a report that shows how
the speed and responsiveness of your site is affecting a typical visitor’s
experience. This kind of testing can be difficult to do on your own because
your Web server may be on-premises, and your pages are probably cached in
your browser, so you can’t easily replicate a new visitor’s experience from a
different location.
If your site uses structured data markup, then you can also use the Search
Console to measure the performance of SERP special features such as
Sitelinks search boxes and enriched results.
 Google Shopping
https://www.google.com/shopping
This search engine focuses only on e-commerce sites. The index contains
product listings that can be searched, sorted, and filtered by price, color,
options, and availability.
Most people have a few favorite stores where they buy almost everything
(Amazon and Newegg, for instance), and don’t want to go elsewhere. Even
Amazon doesn’t have everything for every occasion, though. Google
Shopping’s real value is on those rare-but-important occasions when you
need to find the right item first, then figure out where and how you’ll buy it.
For instance, when shopping for a unique gift, or a key piece of a Halloween
costume.
 Google Trends
https://www.google.com/trends
This shows you the most popular search terms and topics in the world right
now, both on the Web and on YouTube. If you want to filter search trends by
location, you can specify a country, state, or city. You can also specify a
search term and see how its popularity has changed over time, complete with
line graphs of search activity and links to related pages. For instance, you can
chart the historical difference in search popularity in the New York City area
for the queries: New York Giants and New York Jets. (When I ran that
analysis on Google Trends, the results showed that the Giants were more
popular in general, but there were spikes in interest in the Jets after specific
events.)
Google Trends is an extremely useful tool for keyword research, especially if
your sites rely on seasonal or pop culture search traffic. It’s also an excellent
source of inspiration for marketing campaigns, product development, and
new content for blogs, channels, podcasts, and social media posts.
 Programmable Search Engine
https://programmablesearchengine.google.com
Rather than develop your own search engine or integrate bulky search
libraries and maintain your own index, why not outsource it all to Google?
Just select the sites you want to create a private index for, then copy-and-
paste the Programmable Search Element code into your webpage to create a
search box.
Search results will be generated in a standard Google SERP, including
contextual advertising. If you want to remove the sponsored ads, you can
switch to a pay-per-query version of this service without having to make any
code changes.
If you use Google Analytics to track visitor activity on your site, you can get
some extra details about on-site search queries if you use the Google
Programmable Search Engine.
 Public Data Explorer
https://www.google.com/publicdata/directory
This is a search engine for public datasets. Many governments, public
institutions, and large corporations make their collected data available on the
Internet. This data contains no secrets; it’s all public information collected
from studies, surveys, and censuses. Google ensures that it’s properly
formatted and organized, and offers some visualization tools that enable you
to easily create various charts and graphs. You can even upload and integrate
your own datasets with public data sources, as long as they are modeled in
the Dataset Publishing Language (DSPL) format.
This service is particularly useful to students and journalists who need to
show a certain data trend for a paper or article, but it could also provide
material for corporate marketing.
 Third Party Apps and Sites
Google’s services are often much more powerful than its interfaces suggest.
Listed below are some third-party sites and apps that either do something
cool with Google services, or provide an alternative interface to them.
A Google A Day
https://www.agoogleaday.com
This is a daily search challenge that runs in the New York Times, above the
crossword puzzle. You’re given questions to answer, such as: “An 11-foot
bird lives less than two miles from 30.891383,-102.885032. What’s his
name?” To find the answers, you have to develop clever Google search
queries.
Answer the Public
https://answerthepublic.com
This is an SEO research tool that analyzes your keywords, then shows you
related search phrases that are formed as questions, or as prepositional
phrases that imply questions. The results are presented visually in a mind
map of clickable queries that lead directly to Google search results.
For instance, if you were to give it the keywords frozen vegetables, you’d see
a mind map of recent Google queries that ask questions about frozen
vegetables, such as:
Are frozen vegetables as good as fresh?
How are frozen vegetables processed?
If you click on the prepositions tab, the results change into queries that
imply questions, for example:
Frozen vegetables for beef stew
Frozen vegetables Walmart Canada
There is also a comparisons tab that shows queries that ask for a direct
comparison between your keywords and related ones, for instance:
Frozen vegetables vs fresh
Frozen vegetables versus fresh versus canned
It also shows queries that combine your keyword with something topically
related, such as:
Frozen vegetables and keto diet
Frozen vegetables and protein
Aside from its value in marketing and SEO, Answer the Public can give you
some excellent ideas for building complex search queries.
DEVONagent
https://www.devontechnologies.com/apps/devonagent
This is a powerful metasearch engine and search notification tool in one. It
allows complex queries, and has filtering options to remove unwanted or
redundant results.
Unfortunately it only works on Mac OS.
Google Feud
https://www.googlefeud.com
This is a Web-based game that tests your Google knowledge on current
trends and popular queries. The challenges fall into four categories: culture,
people, names, and questions. The culture category tests knowledge of
modern cultural practices and habits. The people category tests knowledge of
people and their relationships. The names category focuses on celebrities and
other people who are in the news. The questions category contains interesting
top-trending search queries.
Mashups
A mashup is a site, program, or app that combines multiple (usually
external) services into one interface by using APIs to retrieve data and
present it in a unique way.
Most Google sites and services have excellent APIs and are mashup-friendly
(there’s more information about this in the “Advanced Research Tactics”
chapter later in this book). Google Maps is one of the most popular services
for this purpose. It’s so widely used that there’s a blog dedicated to tracking
Google Maps mashups:
https://googlemapsmania.blogspot.com
To see a more comprehensive list of mashups that use Google services and
other public APIs, check out The Programmable Web:
https://www.programmableweb.com
Soovle
https://www.soovle.com
Soovle is a metasearch site that executes one query across several search
engines, and returns an abridged set of top results from all of them in a single
page. Each keyword is clickable, and will take you directly to the results.
This is an excellent tool for finding ideas for creating new site content, and
for reputation management.
Ubersuggest.io
This is a powerful, free resource for keyword research for SEO and online
marketing.
When you type in a keyword or search phrase into Ubersuggest.io, it pulls
search data from Google Autocomplete, and advertising data from Google
Keyword Planner, and provides an approximate value and strength of
competition in Google Ads, along with some ideas for related keywords and
phrases.
 How to Search For Something You Don’t Know the
Name Of
Sometimes you don’t know how to describe something you want to know
more about. When that happens, here are some options:
Google Reverse Search By Image
If you have a clear photo of something you want to look up, you can ask
Google Images to try to match it with a reverse image search. To do this, go
to https://images.google.com, click the camera icon in the search bar, then
upload the image file.
There are also a variety of third-party smartphone apps that make this process
quicker and easier for images you’ve downloaded.
Reddit: What Is This Thing?
https://www.reddit.com/r/whatisthisthing
If the reverse image search doesn’t help, then the next step is to ask real
people via crowdsourcing. The ‘What is this thing’ community on reddit.com
exists solely for that purpose.
If you post a picture of the object there, hopefully you’ll get some insight on
it from hundreds of thousands of subscribers.
Optimal Query Technique
Good search queries aren’t just space-separated lists of keywords. If you
want to truly plumb the depths of the Web for specific information, you must
learn how to use special characters and search operators to build complex
queries.
 Best Practices
If a simple search query yields millions of search results, don’t waste time
skimming over them. Instead, use the advice in the subsections below to
refine your query and get a more focused result set.
Scope
An optimal search query accurately combines your interest with your intent.
For instance, if you want to know how to calculate statistics, don’t just search
for statistics. That will give you millions of results on the theory and history
of the subject, biographical articles about famous statisticians, links to books
and blogs, etc.
You can narrow the scope by indicating that you’re interested only in the
processes involved with calculating statistics. Try these queries instead:
how do I calculate statistics?
statistics formulas
Capitalization and Punctuation
Searches are case insensitive, so using different combinations of lowercase
and uppercase characters won’t alter the result set. The only exceptions to
this are search operators, which are explained later in this chapter.
Google also ignores commas, slashes, colons (except for search operators),
semicolons, and periods, but it does properly interpret apostrophes (assuming
you use them correctly) to indicate contractions, ownership, or plurality. So a
query for marketer’s toolkit will return different results from marketers’
toolkit, but the latter will be equivalent to marketers toolkit (without the
apostrophe) because the meaning is identical.
Google also interprets hyphens to indicate a strong relationship between two
words. In English and a few other languages, you can create ad-hoc
compound words by placing a hyphen between them. Google takes this usage
into account, but also considers alternative methods of expressing the same
concept. For instance, in the query on-site consulting, Google would consider
the hyphenated word on-site to be identical to the non-hyphenated
concatenated form of the word: onsite. However, if the hyphenated version
did not return very many results, Google would give secondary consideration
to the interpretation of on site as two words.
Words, Phrases, and Stemming
The order and grouping of words in a search query has a big impact on the
results. As I implied in the previous section on hyphenated words, Google
uses a specific hierarchy of interpretation. The first layer of the hierarchy is
always a literal phrase, which means that the entire query is considered to be
a single entity. The top results will usually be pages that contain those exact
words in that exact order.
Next, if there are three or more words in the query, Google will attempt to
create shorter phrases from some of them, or multiple consecutive phrases.
After that, Google will look for common derivatives and variations of each
word in the query. This is called stemming. After that, Google considers
alternate spellings, misspellings, synonyms, and closely related words.
If there still aren’t many high-quality results, then as a last resort Google
reduces the query to an unordered list of words that can appear anywhere and
in any order in a document or on a page.
Sometimes you need to tell Google that you’re looking for an exact word and
do not want results that contain derivatives or related words. To do that, put
quotation marks around the word. For example, these queries would (and
should) produce different results, since the words in quotes have vastly
different origins:
invented the word “assassin”
invented the word “assassinate”
You can use this for multiple words in a query as long as they are separately
encapsulated in quotes.
If you encapsulate more than one word in the same set of quotes, those words
become a phrase. Google will look for this phrase exactly as typed (ignoring
capitalization and punctuation), but it will also check to see if there are more
popular results for similar phrases. If there are, it will ask if you made a
mistake, and suggest a more likely phrase.
For example, let’s say you want to learn about the Nexus 7 Android tablet. A
query for “nexus 7” would return some excellent resources with plenty of
details and reviews. But let’s say you mistyped the query and accidentally
searched for “nexum 7”. The results from that query would have nothing to
do with the Nexus 7 tablet. Instead, Google would return pages where the
number 7 follows the word nexum, which by unfortunate coincidence is a
Latin term for a kind of debt contract commonly used in the ancient Roman
Republic.
The top results for “nexum 7” show snippets that quote ancient Roman and
Greek laws, and bibliographies and indexes from books that refer to a page
number that starts with 7. Since there are few results, Google asks if you
meant to search for “nexium 7” instead. Nexium is the brand name of a
modern pharmaceutical product, and has a much higher search volume than
nexum.
If you click on the suggested phrase, Google modifies the query to match
“nexium 7”, and regenerates the result page. The top results now show
content snippets such as:
Nexium: 7 Things You Should Know
Receive your prescription NEXIUM 7-10 days after enrolling
Nexium, 7 pills per bottle
As you can see, Google ignores all punctuation when considering the phrase,
which leads to some fascinating and unexpected results.
Even if there are only two words in your search query, using quotation marks
to create a literal phrase will nearly always return different (usually more
relevant) results. If you were to query nexus 7 without quotes, you would get
a lot of results that contain both the number 7 and the word nexus, but not
necessarily together or in that order. If there were a highly-cited news article
with great SEO that had the title: “7 Things to Love About the Nexus 4,” that
could be a highly-ranked result for this search query even though it’s about
the Nexus 4 smartphone, and has nothing to do with the Nexus 7 tablet.
You can include multiple phrases in the same query. For example:
“market research” consultants “new zealand”

Such a query would match on documents that contain the word consultants in
front of or behind the phrase “market research”, but giving preference to
pages where consultants appears after “market research”.
When your query has several words and/or phrases, and you know that two of
them must be near each other, but not necessarily next to each other, use the
AROUND operator. Using all capital letters lets Google know that you
intend AROUND to be interpreted as an operator instead of a search term.
You can also specify the number of words that can be between those two
words or phrases by adding a number in parentheses after AROUND. For
example:
x AROUND(n) y

In this formula, x and y are the search terms, and n is the maximum number
of words separating the two. There cannot be a space between the n factor
and AROUND, and the n factor must be enclosed in parenthesis. For
example, say your grandmother used to make a great dish with lentil and
lemon, but you can’t remember what its name was. Here’s a query that might
find the result you’re looking for:
lentils AROUND(4) lemon

Specificity
Even though Google will typically look for synonyms of search terms, you’ll
get better results if you can think of a few different specific ways of
expressing what you’re looking for.
Sometimes you have to use a particular word, even if it’s synonymous with a
word currently in your query. For example, let’s say you were listening to the
audiobook for Ernest Hemingway’s posthumously-published memoir, A
Moveable Feast, on a long flight. You remember an anecdote from the
introduction that describes how the book’s original manuscript had been
locked inside of a lost steamer trunk for nearly 30 years before it was found
and returned to Hemingway shortly before his death.
That might make a good story to tell to open your next business presentation,
so you search Google for something like Hemingway luggage manuscript
returned, hoping to get some quotable details. Strangely, the top results don’t
seem to have anything to do with what you heard in A Moveable Feast.
Instead, half of the results describe an account of Hemingway’s first wife
Elizabeth losing a suitcase containing all of his notes, manuscripts, and
carbon copies (the early 20th-century equivalent of document backups) on a
train in 1922. The other half of the results are articles using this incident as an
allegory for various personality traits, business practices, and advice on
writing; and promotional material for some recent novels that use
Hemingway’s lost suitcase as a plot element.
The problem is—according to reliable sources—the suitcase was never
found, and the manuscripts were never recovered. That’s not what it said in A
Moveable Feast, though. What could be wrong?
Re-listening to that passage in the book, you note that technically it wasn’t a
suitcase, it was a steamer trunk. Would changing that part of the query really
make a difference? Try it:
Hemingway steamer trunk manuscript returned

Aha! Most of the results are still skewed toward the 1922 suitcase debacle,
but a few of them give some clues about what you’re looking for: a Louis
Vuitton trunk that was lost in 1928, and recovered at the Ritz Hotel in Paris
in 1956. With those clues, you can refine your query further to find more
reliable sources.
From a functional and linguistic perspective, ‘steamer trunks’ and ‘suitcases’
aren’t very different; they’re both forms of luggage for long-distance trips.
But as it turns out, a “lost suitcase” and a “lost steamer trunk” refer to
completely separate incidents in Ernest Hemingway’s history. Sometimes
you have to be extra specific with your search terms.
Boolean Logic
When you want results that include two specific synonymous or closely
related words, use the OR operator. For example:
direct marketing consultant OR expert
This will combine the results for two phrases: “direct marketing consultant”
and “direct marketing expert”.
The OR operator must be capitalized to distinguish it from or as a keyword.
The pipe symbol, which is usually shared with the backslash key on a
standard PC keyboard, is an alternate way of expressing OR:
direct marketing consultant | expert
To specify a word or phrase that you specifically want to exclude from
results, use the NOT operator in front it, expressed as a minus (or dash)
symbol. For example, this query ignores all results that contain the phrase
“business plan”:
“marketing plan” -”business plan”
You must put a space before the dash, but not after it. If you don’t use spaces
properly, Google may interpret it as a hyphen instead of an exclusion
operator.
You can use both the NOT and OR operators in the same query.
Wildcards For Unknown Words
The asterisk (or star) character acts as a wildcard, which represents an
unknown word in a query. Asterisks can be used as a substitute only for an
entire word, not for a part of a word, and there must be a space between the
wildcard and other query terms and phrases.
Sometimes you want to look for a variety of phrases that contain specific
keywords, such as ohio * cars, in which the asterisk would represent many
useful words such as: used, wrecked, classic, red, convertible, or Honda.
It’s also a good way to separate two words that you don’t want to be treated
as a phrase. For instance if you’re searching for advice on how to market a
book, you’d be better off with a search for marketing * books than for
marketing books, as the latter would focus on books about marketing.
The wildcard is particularly useful inside of an exact search phrase. For
example, “standards * marketing” would return pages that match for the
phrases standards for marketing, standards in marketing, and standards and
marketing, to name a few.
The asterisk is also very handy when used in conjunction with the site:
operator (which is explained later in this chapter) to restrict a search to
certain subdomains. For example, here’s how you would restrict your search
to sites with a blog subdomain:
site:blog.*.*

You can also search by top-level domain (abbreviated as TLD), which is the
two-, three-, or four-letter segment of the domain name after the last dot. For
instance, this would search all sites that use the .blog TLD:
site:*.blog
You can use a wildcard to be even more specific with subdomains and TLDs.
For instance, this would look for news subdomains among sites hosted in the
United Kingdom:
site:news.*.co.uk
There are two exceptions where the wildcard operator behaves differently.
The first is when you use it between two numbers; Google interprets this as a
multiplication operator instead of a wildcard, and will display the product of
those two numbers. Secondly, the wildcard operator will not work when used
in the same query with other operators that begin with all, such as
allinanchor:, allintext:, allintitle:, and allinurl: (these are explained later in
this chapter).
Currency Symbols
Currency symbols, such as $, will change the nature of a number. A search
for Nikon 400 will yield different results than Nikon $400.
 Using Google Search Operators
Search operators are reserved words that enable you to apply more powerful
filters to a query.
You must pay close attention to capitalization and spaces when using search
operators. The basic search operators mentioned earlier in this chapter must
be in capital letters, but the advanced search operators listed below must be in
lowercase. This may require that you manually correct auto-capitalization
features when searching from a mobile device. Some operators must have a
blank space after them, and some require that there be no space between the
colon and the search term.
As I mentioned earlier, many of the advanced operators do not accept a
wildcard * symbol when used inside of a phrase. If you use a wildcard and
get 0 results (or unexpected results), you must narrow your searches to an
exact phrase, or use the OR operator to search for several phrases.
before: and after:
The before: operator limits search results to those that were added to the
index before a given date. The after: operator limits results to those that were
indexed after a given date.
You can specify a four-digit year, or you can add a two-digit month and two-
digit day in the YYYY-MM-DD format. You can use either a slash or a dash
to separate each date segment. If you only specify a year, the rest of the date
is assumed to be 01-01 (January 1st).
You can use the before: and after: operators in the same query to narrow
search results to a certain limited timeframe. For example:
frozen vegetables before:2020 after:2019-02-14
There is no space between the colon and the date.
cache:
The cache: operator provides a snapshot view of any page indexed by the
Googlebot crawler. This may not be current, and it’s usually incomplete
because many content types (such as rich media) aren’t cached, and scripts
that sites use to dynamically generate content may not function when called
from a cached page.
The cache is useful when a site is down, when there’s a script interfering with
the page so that you can’t see anything (such as an interstitial ad, cookie-
based paywall, or JavaScript redirect), and for testing your own webpages to
make sure Google is indexing them properly.
Use the cache: operator with a Web address, with or without the https://
prefix, and don’t put a space between them. For example:
cache:www.marketingprofs.com
The Google cache is hosted on the webcache.googleusercontent.com domain,
though you can’t access it directly.
define:
This operator provides a OneBox information card that concisely defines the
specified word. Below it are links to dictionaries and other online references.
If a term spans multiple words, you should use quotes to create a phrase in
order to get the most accurate and refined results, but most of the time you’ll
get the same answer even if you don’t. For example, if you use this query to
retrieve definitions of the term ‘tipping point:’
define: ”tipping point”
You’ll get largely the same top result set as this query:
define:tipping point
It doesn’t matter if there is a space after the colon in this operator.
filetype: and ext:
These operators do the same thing, but since filetype: is more common and
more descriptive of its function, I’m only going to use that one for examples
in this book.
By adding the filetype: operator to your query, you can restrict your search to
Word documents, Excel documents, PDF files, or PowerPoint files. Since
there could be two different extensions for older and newer versions of
Microsoft Office files, you should account for both of them with the OR
operator, as in these examples:
filetype:doc | filetype:docx
filetype:xls | filetype:xlsx
If you want some ideas on how to create a great PowerPoint presentation on
email marketing, try this query:
email marketing filetype:ppt OR filetype:pptx
Need a Word template for a marketing plan? Try this:
marketing plan template filetype:doc OR filetype:docx

As you can see, Google indexes everything that is publicly linked on the
Web. So if you don’t want your own marketing plans to show up on result
pages, either don’t link to them, or put them behind a login prompt. There’s
more information on preventing indexation of specific media types in the
“Advanced Research Tactics” chapter later in this book.
You can use any file extension (the three or four characters after the dot in a
filename) with the filetype: operator, and there must be no space after the
colon.
inanchor: and allinanchor:
An HTML link has two required components: a URL, and either some link
text or an object (such as an image) to associate with it. The link text is the
blue underlined text that you click on to go to a URL.
Another word for link is anchor (that’s why the HTML element for a link is
<a>), and therefore “link text” and “anchor text” are synonymous.
Anchors lead to another HTML page or to a file or other resource, and
usually the link text describes the destination (or at least sets an appropriate
expectation for visitors).
The inanchor: operator specifies a word or phrase that appears in the anchor
text of links in the search index.
This is most useful for testing or finding internal links on a site. For example,
if you recently changed the title of your homepage from “Home” to “Railfan
Central,” you could use this query to find all the links on your site that still
use the old “Home” anchor text:
site:www.example.com inanchor:home
Follow the inanchor: operator with a word or a phrase in quotes, without a
space after the colon.
The allinanchor: operator does the same thing as inanchor:, except with
multiple words in the link text. For example, this query would return pages
relating to Web metrics that have the words download and trial in the link
text:
web metrics allinanchor: download trial
You must put a space after the colon when using allinanchor:.
intext: and allintext:
Use intext: to limit the results to pages that contain a certain word anywhere
within the on-page text content of the <body> HTML element. There are two
use cases for this operator. One is to explicitly ignore the page title and all
metadata within the <head> element, and focus only on the actual rendered
text. The other is for filtering a broad search for specific terms that, if queried
by themselves, would otherwise return different results. For instance if you
were trying to find information about late nineteenth century pictorialism in
abstract art, you could use the intext: operator to restrict a broader search for
abstract art with this query:
nineteenth century abstract art intext:pictorialism
When you want to specify multiple words, use allintext: instead, with a
space-separated list of words after it. You cannot use any other search
operators in the same query with allintext:, and every word that follows the
operator will apply to it.
There is no space after intext: or allintext:.
intitle: and allintitle:
Use the intitle: operator to search only within the HTML <title> element of
webpages. Since most modern document file formats have similar <title>
XML metadata elements, this operator will also generally work with
document titles, but to restrict it to files (meaning you want to exclude all
HTML pages) you must combine it with the filetype: operator.
For example if you want to find Microsoft Word documents that have the
phrase “marketing plan” in the title (not the filename, but the title metadata
defined in the document’s properties), you could use this query:
intitle:”marketing plan” filetype:docx
There is no space after the colon in the intitle: operator, and you can specify
either one word or a phrase in quotes.
To search for multiple words that appear in any order in page or document
titles, use the allintitle: operator followed by a space-separated list of words.
For instance, this query searches for pages that contain all four of these words
in the <title> element:
allintitle: channel conflict online retail
You must put a space after the colon in allintitle:.
inurl: and allinurl:
Use the inurl: operator to restrict search results to pages that contain a
particular word anywhere in the Web address.
When combined with the site: operator, you can use inurl: to list all indexed
pages within a specific directory on a specific website. For instance, this
query would find all pages in the ftp directory on the Kellogg School of
Management site:
inurl:ftp site:https://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu

You can also find all pages that use a particular JavaScript function by
searching for that function name in the URL. For example:
inurl:ToolPage site:https://www.example.com
There is no space after the colon in inurl:.
To search for multiple words in a Web address, use the allinurl: operator.
For instance, to find pages that contain the words china and exporting
anywhere in the URL (including the filename, extension, parameters,
directories, and domain), you would use this query:
allinurl: china exporting
Alternatively you could do this with two inurl: operators (one for each
word), but allinurl: is more concise and easier to change.
You must put a space after the colon when using the allinurl: operator.
Number Range (..)
You can use the traditional mathematical number range notation (two dots
between two numbers) as a search operator. For example, this query will find
documents that mention 2001, 2002, 2003, and 2004:
confidential business plan 2001..2004
Commas in numbers are ignored, but currency symbols are not, as shown in
this query:
confidential business plan $2000000..$5000000
If you omit the second number, Google will assume infinity. For example,
100.. will match on any number greater than or equal to 100.
There cannot be any spaces between the numbers and dots.
related:
When you want to find pages that Google believes are similar to a specific
webpage, use the related: operator. For example, this query would find pages
that are related to the MarketingProfs home page:
related:www.marketingprofs.com
This is identical to the Similar link that Google sometimes provides in the
URL line for regular search results.
The https:// prefix is optional, and does not change the results.
site:
You can restrict the scope of a search to a single domain or directory by using
the site: operator. For example, this query will look for pages on the
MarketingProfs site that are associated with the keywords email and
marketing:
email marketing site:www.marketingprofs.com
The site: operator is also useful for testing indexation. To find all known
pages on a site, just use the site: operator with a domain, and don’t include
any other search terms.
There’s a catch, though: Google will place a hard limit of 775 on the number
of results from this kind of query, and the lowest-ranked among them will not
appear unless you jump to the last result page and click the link that says:
‘repeat the search with the omitted results included.’
If you hit the 775-result limit and want to know if there are more results
beyond that, you’ll have to make your query more specific.
You can reduce the search scope further by specifying a directory. For
example:
email marketing site:https://www.marketingprofs.com/tls
You can also expand the scope to include subdomains by omitting the www
from the URL. For instance, if you wanted to search all subdomains on
Yahoo.com for the words email and marketing, you might use this query:
email marketing site:yahoo.com
The results would encompass all of the indexed subdomains on Yahoo.com,
such as:
www.yahoo.com
 movies.yahoo.com
travel.yahoo.com
personals.yahoo.com
You can go one step further, and use the site: operator with a top-level
domain extension, like .com, .org, .gov, or .co.uk. You don’t need to specify
the dot. Thus, you can restrict your search to .gov domains by including
site:gov in your query.
There is no space after the colon when using this operator.
Social Media
You can specify that a word should be strictly interpreted as a Twitter or
Facebook handle by putting the @ symbol before it. If you search for a
specific Twitter handle, the SERP will contain a carousel of public tweets
from that account (unless it’s a particularly controversial account), other
social media account profiles associated with that handle will appear in the
knowledge panel, and the Web search results will focus on social media sites
where that handle is used.
You can also search for hashtags by inserting the # symbol in front of a
search term to limit the results to skew (but not limit) the results toward
social media sites. For instance, a query for United Nations returns a full
knowledge panel, various rich results, and more than 600 million Web search
results. Searching for #unitednations only returns about half a million results,
and rich results for social media sites are moved to the top of the SERP.
If you include any other search terms or operators in a query that contains a
social media handle or hashtag, then Google usually interprets your query as
a standard Web search, and some of these extra features may not appear.
The @ symbol is not a standard universal indicator of social media handles or
usernames, but the most popular social media sites use it or at least recognize
your intention when you use it. Hashtags, however, are more widely used
across the social media world, and people often use them even when there is
no native hashtag function on the site they’re posting on. In those instances,
hashtags simply become normal search terms. It’s worth pointing out, though,
that hashtags exist so that people can apply specific metadata (in the form of
searchable and sortable keywords) to their social media content. Google is
advanced enough now that hashtags are unnecessary—you could just use a
regular search term or phrase instead—but they seem to have become a
unique form of colloquial speech. People often use hashtags on sites that
don’t support them, and they write them on signs and say them out loud in
videos.
stocks:
Use the stocks: operator (without a space after the colon) with a valid ticker
symbol to retrieve financial information, including the latest stock quotes
from Google Finance.
If you search for a ticker symbol without the stocks: operator, Google will
usually still return a stock quote in a OneBox result, unless the ticker symbol
is a common word, or identical to the company name. For instance, searches
for dell and for stocks:dell will give different results.
when:
This operator only works in Google News, and it only mirrors the
functionality of the date options in the search filter drop-down menu. The
when: operator is followed by a time interval in two-digit format (1h for one
hour, 1d for one day, 1w and 1y for one week and one year, respectively)
with no spaces between.
For instance, this query would search for news stories posted in the past hour
regarding the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula 1 racing team, though it’s a
little tricky because journalists often use the abbreviation ‘F1’ instead of
spelling out ‘Formula One,’ so it’s a good idea to use the OR operator to
account for both:
Mercedes “formula one” | F1 when:1h

Deprecated Operators
In the past there were more search operators than the ones documented
above. As Google gets better at interpreting user intent, and as new features
and options are added to Google’s interfaces, redundant search operators are
either quietly retired, or fall into disfavor due to erratic results. That doesn’t
mean that all references to those operators will disappear (including old print
editions of this book), so if you execute a broad search for Google search
operators, you’ll find a long list of pages that may contain some operators
that I haven’t documented in Google Power Search. That’s because those
articles are old and haven’t been updated.
Here are some notable ex-search operators that you might see on some of
those vintage pages:
1. + (the AND Boolean operator): This used to explicitly include a search
term, but since that’s the default behavior of words without the NOT
(minus sign) operator anyway, it’s been made redundant.
2. daterange: This used to reduce the search scope to a specific period of
time defined by two numbers in the archaic Julian date format.
Technically daterange: still exists and will alter results if you use it,
but it doesn’t work as intended. It’s been replaced by the custom date
filter in the Tools menu on the search results page, and by the more
granular before: and after: operators.
3. link: This used to return a list of pages that link to a given page.
4. ~ (synonyms): Google used to only interpret all search terms literally.
If you wanted your results to contain derivatives and synonyms of a
word (stemming) you had to put a tilde symbol before it. This is no
longer necessary because Google has evolved to automatically
consider related words based on entity relationships. So if you don’t
want Google to potentially alter or substitute a search word, you have
to put quotation marks around it.
5. info: This used to show you exactly how a given webpage would look
in search results (the title, snippet, and link). You can now view the
same information by querying for the full page URL.
 Non-Google Search Resources
Google is an extremely popular and powerful search engine, but there are
some niches where it is neither the most appropriate nor adequate tool for the
job. If you’re looking for information that you’re sure is entirely or mostly
publicly available on the Web, then Google should at least be your starting
point.
Sometimes information is only partially online, and may be difficult to find
with Google because it’s inherently difficult to search for, is digitized in a
Google-unfriendly format, or isn’t publicly online at all. For instance if
you’re researching the history of the Vatican, Google can help you learn the
basics and point you in the direction of books and experts, but a complete
study of the subject isn’t possible from your home computer or smartphone.
Gated Content and Paywalls
A substantial amount of Web content is indexed in summary, but requires
authentication to view in full. Most of the time this is in the form of a paywall
that restricts access to paid subscribers, but sometimes it’s a gate that
prevents public access to private forums, mailing list archives, or social
media pages.
Sites like Facebook and LinkedIn make certain user profile information
visible to Google, but when you try to click through to them in search results,
you’re redirected to a login screen. Think tanks, market research
consultancies, and private universities often sell detailed reports, studies, and
research data on a commercial basis. Scientific and medical journals may
require a paid subscription to access peer-reviewed studies and academic
research papers.
You may be able to get free access to some of these services via a public
library, university, or through your employer, though you may have to ask a
librarian or administrator for permission.
The Invisible Web
There’s also a lot of information that is freely available online, but isn’t
indexed by Google or other public search engines at all. Government records
pertaining to court cases, taxes, real estate transactions, and motor vehicle
registrations may be available online, but only on local government
webpages, and only after clicking through some warnings about privacy
regulations. In these instances, Google can help you find those sites and
portals, but it can’t usually index anything beyond them.
There are also private search engines and databases for criminal, medical, and
financial records. They’re highly regulated, strictly monitored, and even the
people who do have access to them still need explicit permission or a
justifiable cause to use them.
The Offline World
No matter how much data Google indexes, and no matter how advanced its
machine learning becomes, it is and will always be inferior to human experts
for many topics.
A large portion of the world’s physical historical information resources are
still not online, and may never be. They’re stored in museums, historical
societies, very old libraries, religious institutions, and government and
university archives. Some items may not be electronically catalogued,
haven’t been translated, are too delicate to handle, or are restricted to viewing
by special personnel only. Many items may be able to be viewed in person
under strict supervision, but are not allowed to be photographed or
transcribed. Even when digital resources do exist, such as scans or
photographs, they may be protected by copyright laws and zealously
defended by curators and stewards.
There are also an unknown number of books and periodicals that have been
out of print for decades, and have not been scanned into digital editions.
There are probably copies of them packed into filing cabinets in publishing
offices, buried in boxes in storage units, archived in library annexes, or
abandoned in lost steamer trunks in hotel basements. In these cases, Google
can help you find scholars, librarians, and amateur historians who may have
some of those books in their collection, or can direct you to other hidden
resources.
Fagan Finder
https://www.faganfinder.com
This is a directory of search engines, databases, and other information
resources, many of which may not be indexed by Google. At a glance, you
can get some excellent ideas for finding information online outside of the
traditional Web search scope.
LexisNexis
https://lexisnexis.com
LexisNexis Advance is a subscription-based computer-assisted legal research
engine that finds and cross-references laws, statutes, and the case law that
applies to them. This is all public information, but from a legal standpoint it
has very little value unless it’s properly cross-referenced and aggregated.
Google can help you find a particular law as it is written, but it isn’t very
good at showing how that law has been tested and challenged in court.
 Evaluating the Credibility of Search Results
Throughout this book I’ve implied that high-ranking results are the only ones
worth looking at, not just because they’re the most relevant (assuming your
query was specific enough), but also because they usually lead to the most
trustworthy sites. Unfortunately this is not always true.
Scams aren’t the only problem on the Web. Sometimes a page has content
that is outright wrong in either a factual or moral sense. Google doesn’t
usually try to make judgements about bad information, except in a few
isolated cases related to public health, criminal activity, terrorism, targeted
harassment, and a range of content that would be extremely offensive or
disturbing to most people. Scammers don’t always have their own websites,
though; often they operate out of trusted sites like eBay, Amazon, and
Facebook, which makes them difficult to remove from the Google search
index.
Google uses two factors to determine information quality: relevance and
authority (or trust).
Relevance is a measure of confidence in the topical alignment between the
query and the results. When Google has a high degree of certainty that it
understands the intent of your query, then it returns a list of pages that it is
certain will satisfy that intent, or it provides a OneBox result or Knowledge
Panel that provides an instant no-click answer. Relevance is determined by
the various technologies covered in “The Technology Behind Search” chapter
later in this book.
Google assigns a high level of authority to sites that have proven to be
popular and trustworthy over time. Authority is assigned via a bootstrapping
process, where Google recognizes that a site is trustworthy because other
trustworthy sites are linking to it. A page may have extremely relevant
content on it for a given query, but if trusted sites aren’t linking to it, then it
will have a low level of authority and will likely be placed far below less
relevant (but more authoritative) pages in the SERP.
Neither of these factors account for bad information.
Bad information isn’t always intentionally misleading. Sometimes it’s just
old information that has since been disproven, retracted, or corrected. In
many search scenarios a page with older information on a given topic will
rank higher than a different page with updated and corrected information,
particularly when there is a lot of news reporting and social media activity
involved. A news report about any given topic may spark outrage and
generate a lot of Web content, but if that article later proves to be untrue or
misleading, the correct information rarely gets as much attention.
When it comes to research, newer information is almost always better. The
older a piece of Web content is, the less likely it is to be relevant today,
though it may rank higher in search results because it’s had more time to
establish authority through links. Given how much the world changed due to
the COVID-19 pandemic, a large portion of non-fiction content published
prior to 2020 can be considered unreliable in a modern context. Even honest
content from 2019 like a restaurant review or a vacation planning guide may
no longer be accurate or relevant.
Sometimes bad information is partially intentional. On blogs and social
media, people often repeat rumors as though they’re true, and express radical
beliefs and opinions that have little or no basis in fact. Google may rank some
of this content highly even though it’s demonstrably false.
At the extreme end of the bad information spectrum are organized
disinformation campaigns. According to a 2017 report in The Daily
Telegraph, at least 30 countries employ troll farms (sometimes called
keyboard armies) to spread political propaganda on social media, erode trust
in journalism, and make the Internet a generally unpleasant space for
reasonable people. Professional trolls maintain multiple personas on multiple
accounts, and spend a full work week posting comments, memes, ‘deepfake’
videos, and other misleading content, mostly on social media. One easy way
to spot one of these full-time trolls is to look at their history. Do they only
post about national political issues? Real people have a variety of non-
political interests, and they post photos of themselves with friends and family
in a variety of social settings. Trolls often steal profile photos from other
social media accounts, so if they only have a profile photo up, you can do a
reverse image search on it to see if it’s being used elsewhere.
Google makes an effort to exclude some bad content from its index, but
ultimately it’s up to you to assess the quality or credibility of the information
provided on SERPs. This is not a strict process; it’s just a set of questions and
guidelines to consider for each aspect of credibility: authority, accuracy,
objectivity, currency, and coverage. (You might find it easier to remember
these trust factors with the acronym AAOCC).
Here are some questions you might ask to determine credibility based on
each of those factors:
Authority:
Who are the authors? Are they qualified? Are they credible? With
whom are they affiliated? Do their affiliations affect their credibility?
Can I verify that this person is who they say they are?
Who is the publisher? What is the publisher’s reputation? Who owns
the publishing company?
Does the site have an About page or masthead, and how much
information is on it? Is there a photo of the author, phone number,
email address, physical address?
Does this look like the work of a professional?
Accuracy:
Are there any obvious language or logic errors?
Are the interpretations and implications reasonable?
Is there enough evidence to support the conclusions? Is the evidence
verifiable?
Do the authors properly list their sources, references, or citations?
Objectivity:
What do the authors say they want to accomplish?
Is there an implicit or explicit bias?
Is the information fact, opinion, spoof, or satirical?
How commercial (and competitive) is this topic?
Who is making money off of this, and how?
Currency:
Is the information current? Is there anything newer than this?
When was the site last updated?
Is the site well-maintained and modern-looking? Are there any
broken links?
Coverage:
Is the information relevant to your topic and assignment?
Who is the intended audience?
 Is the material presented at an appropriate level for that audience?
Is the information complete? Is it unique?
Are there other sites that have the same or similar information?
From a technical standpoint, here are some other factors that affect my sense
of trust:
Is it hosted on its own domain, or on a free site like Blogger or
Wordpress?
Is it a TLD I tend to trust, like .edu, or .gov?
Is it a social media post?
Is it professionally designed, and does the page render properly on
my screen?
Are there a lot of clickbait ads?
Finally, beware sites that steal content from more credible sources, or that are
made to look like a credible source (for instance, a site that is clearly
attempting to be mistaken for Amazon.com or the New York Times. If you see
the same snippet across multiple search results, that’s a warning sign. While
the information may actually be valid (if it’s stolen from a trusted source),
these sites are up to no good. They may be simple fraudsters who are trying
to earn money from ads or affiliate programs, or they may be hosting some
kind of malware or phishing scheme that could potentially steal your personal
information or login credentials. Again, these kinds of sites don’t usually stay
in the Google index for very long, but while they’re up, they’re potentially
dangerous.
Spot The Troll
https://spotthetroll.org
This is a Web-based quiz that tests your ability to detect fake social media
accounts and content. It was developed by Clemson University professors
Drs. Darren Linvill and Patrick Warren to help people learn to discriminate
between organic content and political disinformation. It’s a great way to put
your credibility evaluation skills to the test.
 Query Comedy
Good search technique involves thinking about a query from Google’s
perspective. Most of us don’t go as far as imagining an emotional response
from Google, but maybe we should. The comedians at College Humor came
up with a hilarious series of videos that show what it might look like if
Google were human. To find them, search YouTube for if Google was a guy.
The Technology Behind Search
Google is constantly changing to keep current with people’s social habits and
professional practices. The bulk of these changes are best described as
evolutionary: frequent minor updates to the core search algorithms to
improve the relevance of search results. These updates are driven by
technological advancements and search trends. As Google adds more
computing resources to its infrastructure, it’s able to provide more relevant
results; and when there’s a high volume of queries on a particular topic,
Google optimizes results for it.
Occasionally Google also makes revolutionary changes in the form of
completely new algorithms, systems, and data structures. This chapter
analyzes Google’s biggest updates, and how they’ve affected the results that
we see for a given query.
 Data Models
Google’s core Web search technology is built on a graph data structure in
which each site in the index is a node that is associated with incoming links
and outgoing links that show how it is related to other sites.
Beyond the regular Web search index, Google uses other kinds of graph data
models to create specialized content for SERP features and other Google
services. The most significant ones are explained in the subsections below.
Knowledge Graph
Knowledge Graph is a crowdsourced knowledgebase that relies on structured
data to define entities and their attributes. Structured data can be defined in
special elements on webpages, or acquired via Google’s machine-learning
analysis of the linguistic patterns of search queries.
In simpler terms, entities are persons, places, things, or concepts; and
attributes are their characteristics. This data is stored in the Google
Knowledge Graph, and displayed in a Knowledge Panel on a result page
when Google determines that it is highly relevant to the query. These answers
are mostly for basic search queries that use a structure like this:
<interrogative> is the <attribute> of <entity>

Here are some examples:

Who is the prime minister of India?
What is the color of malachite?
Who is Goldie Hawn’s daughter?
What is the first phase of the moon?
What is the most abundant element in the universe?
If the relationship between an attribute and a well-known entity is obvious,
you can usually skip the longform query. For example:
Tom Brady statistics
Won’t Back Down lyrics
When your query is in the form of a natural-language question, Google may
turn regular search results into featured snippets that attempt to answer the
question with an enhanced excerpt. These excerpts are longer than usual, and
can contain image thumbnails and numbered lists. If an answer is in an
indexed video, then the excerpt will be in the form of a video clip that
encapsulates it.
When pages contain many similar answer entities (such as a long forum
thread, FAQ page, or tutorial article), Google will choose the most relevant
one for the featured snippet, then create a carousel of smaller summary boxes
below it that link directly to each relevant section of the page.
If several trusted sites offer a common fact, Google presents the most
authoritative summary in a OneBox card. For instance, if you search for
inventor of Velcro, you’ll get a card about the man who invented it. This data
was indexed on a reliable page, and/or the open-source Wikidata.org
database, and George de Mestral and Velcro were identified as related
entities and stored in the Knowledge Graph. When you executed a query
asking about those entities, Google pulled the Knowledge Graph entry for
both, and delivered only the common attribute data between them.
When there are many sources that contain the same fact, the answer is not
usually cited. When there are few sources, Google will cite the most
trustworthy among them.
Sometimes you’ll get multiple cards with different kinds of structured data
relevant to your query. For example, if you search for Sony Alpha A9, you’ll
see rich results that show reviews and pricing, and featured snippets with
facts about this camera model. A search for hay fever will produce a card for
the dictionary definition of the term, and a Knowledge Panel sidebar that
offers information from the Mayo Clinic about this disease. Google even
makes that panel available as a free PDF that you can download and print.
You can also request a restaurant’s menu before you visit. If the menu is
posted someplace and indexed by Google, it will show in a card at the top of
the results.
The Topic Layer
In September 2018, Google added a topic layer to the Knowledge Graph’s
metadata model. By assigning one or more topics and many subtopics to a
webpage or other content, Google can understand a deeper search context,
and more accurately predict what else you want to know about a subject.
For instance, searching for Chicago wedding photographer might cause
Google to loosely consider three topics: Chicago, weddings, and
photography. If you then search for DJ or wedding singer, the common topic
between the two suggests that you’re interested in planning a wedding.
Google can then consider a larger wedding context that includes all related
topics and subtopics. If your next search is for affordable caterer, you’re
likely to get results that are in or near Chicago and specialize in wedding
receptions.
You can direct Google to focus on a specific topic by creating a collection of
search results that represent a long-term search effort. (This is covered in
more depth in the Collections section of the “Google on Mobile Devices”
chapter.) With enough search context in a ‘Chicago wedding planning’
collection, Google will begin to provide suggestions that answer questions
you haven’t asked yet, such as popular wedding venues, officiants, and
honeymoon destinations.
You can see which topics Google thinks you’re interested in by going to the
Discover screen in the Google app on your mobile device, then tapping the
more (three dots) icon. A context menu will appear, with the topic at the top.
If you want to tell Google that you are definitely interested in this topic and
would like to see more content about it, tap the Follow icon, or you can tell
Google you’re not interested in this topic by tapping the Not interested in
link below that.
The topic layer also makes voice search easier by assuming that a series of
voice queries applies to a common context. For example, how old is Sir Ian
McKellan? returns an entity card of Sir Ian McKellan, featuring his age. If
you then ask: how tall is he? Google returns an entity card showing Sir Ian
McKellan’s height. If you then query: where is he from? Google returns an
entity card for Burnley, United Kingdom.
This search technique is exclusive to voice search, both on the Web and in
the Google mobile app.
Knowledge Vault
While Knowledge Graph accumulates data from user-developed content and
crowdsourcing, Knowledge Vault is built on facts indexed from academic
and professional sources. It contains billions of facts, of which a few hundred
million are optimally-trusted confident facts.
There’s more information about Knowledge Vault on the Research at Google
site:
https://research.google.com/pubs/pub45634.html
 Search Algorithms
Google’s original and most well-known search algorithm is PageRank. It
assigns authority to webpages based on how many other sites link to it with
certain keywords in the anchor text, weighted by how authoritative those sites
are. This is still the core logic behind Web search, but over the past decade
it’s been augmented by other algorithms that improve accuracy by analyzing
content in the index.
Hummingbird and RankBrain
RankBrain is an artificial intelligence engine that attempts to learn how
queries relate to content and context so that Google can understand a
searcher’s intent and therefore predict subsequent actions. RankBrain is part
of a revolutionary collection of algorithm updates and enhancements known
as Hummingbird, which began implementation in 2013 and has been
continually enhanced since.
Hummingbird’s purpose is to improve search results on mobile devices.
When people search from their smartphones, they tend to use more
conversational queries than on a desktop computer. For example: find art
supply store nearby or how close is the nearest grocery store. This is closely
related to voice search because queries are often spoken instead of typed on
mobile devices, and people don’t tend to speak in well-formed search queries.
Hummingbird takes all of this into account, along with location, other
available user data, and the user’s search history.
For example, let’s look at the differences between the results for the queries
rice dish and rice recipe. At a glance, they seem to have a similar user intent.
However, before Hummingbird was introduced, the results were optimized
for the individual keyword phrases “rice dish” and “rice recipe”
respectively, which are not literal equivalents. With the Hummingbird update,
Google now considers the user’s intent, which produces near-identical
results.
(Thanks to Eric Enge for this data on pre- and post-Hummingbird search
results.)
Figure 1: Pre-hummingbird search results for rice dish and rice recipe show
little overlap

Figure 2: Post-hummingbird results are more similar

If you often search for recipes or Asian restaurants, then these results will
vary more significantly based on your presumed intent.
Hummingbird relies on a concept called co-occurrence analysis, which
examines the various ways that keywords relate to one another. Through this
process, Google can determine the intent of a query and the focus of a page’s
content.
Conversational and local search are now given heavy consideration beyond
the individual keywords that comprise the query. For instance, a query for art
supply store will now return results for local art supply stores, their locations,
and their contact info. Previously, whichever sites ranked highest for this
phrase would be at the top of the results, even if you weren’t able to visit the
store in person or buy anything there online.
Pigeon
In the summer of 2013, Google introduced the Pigeon algorithm, which uses
location data and preferences to refine search results with distance and
proximity information. You’ll automatically get local results if you execute a
broad search for something that has a strong dependency on locale:
hardware store
post office
grocery store
dance classes
Even within your city, Google prioritizes places that are physically closer to
your exact location, with the highest-ranking results being those with
Knowledge Graph entries. Your location is determined by several factors:
Manual location setting on your mobile device
Your IP address, as determined by your Google account
The location history in your Google account (if enabled)
Search history in your Google account
Your device’s location feature (if you’ve allowed the Google app to
access it)
BERT
In October of 2019, Google officially integrated the Bi-directional Encoder
Representations from Transformers (BERT) algorithm into its search
architecture. BERT is a technique for training a search engine to answer
natural language questions by examining the context of each word in a query.
Traditionally, search engines only processed queries in terms of text strings—
keywords or phrases—without considering what that text actually meant.
With the introduction of BERT, Google has evolved to consider words as a
form of communication instead of plain strings of text; it no longer ignores
stop words (short words that are so common that they are usually ignored by
search engines, such as the, to, and of).
For simple searches, you don’t have to use operators or complex queries. If
you have a broad question, or if you don’t know the proper terms, names, or
details of a particular topic, you can use a natural language query that looks
a lot like a question you would ask a real person.
For instance, let’s say you recall reading a news story about poachers
targeting an endangered bird, and you want to share it on Facebook, but you
can’t seem to find it again. You can’t remember the name of the species or
where its native habitat is, but you do recall that it has a rainbow-colored
beak. A natural search query of what is the bird with the rainbow beak would
provide you with the missing details.
Now that you know the animal is called a toucan, you can refine your original
query and more easily find the news story you wanted to share.
Because Google now considers the order and meaning of words in a query,
it’s much easier to get relevant results in a single plain-language search.
Consider the following query:
parking on a hill with no curb

Previously Google would only consider the keywords, which are parking,
hill, and curb; and it would ignore the stop words, which are: on, a, with, and
no. It would also include results that contained an exact or approximate
phrase match. If you’d instead queried for parking hill curb, the results would
be largely the same, minus the phrase matches.
Post-BERT, Google understands that you’re asking for instructions on how to
park a car on a hill, and that this hill does not have a hard curb. The result set
is filtered for that context, whereas pre-BERT you’d have to refine your
query and search again, or you’d have to visit a few of the results to see if the
information you’re looking for is buried somewhere on the page.
SMITH
The Siamese Multi-depth Transformer-based Hierarchical Encoder
(abbreviated as SMITH) is an improvement on the BERT algorithm. BERT
focuses on the meaning of words within sentences and is therefore limited to
processing small documents, whereas SMITH can understand the meaning of
sentences within a larger document context. Specifically BERT is limited to
text blocks of 512 characters, which is approximately the size of this
paragraph. SMITH can work with up to 2048 characters, which is almost
exactly the same size as the BERT section of this book (slightly more than a
full page of 12-point text).
Previously Google only had a secondhand understanding of the text on a
webpage in its index, relying on HTML metadata tags, links, and link text to
construct topical metadata for each page. With SMITH, Google can now
derive its own understanding of document content, and deliver more relevant
results for long queries. This deeper understanding of page content also
enables a more granular ranking system. Instead of ranking a whole page as a
single document, Google now employs passage indexing, which ranks
individual excerpts of content on pages. Those passages can then be delivered
on the SERP as OneBox results.
SMITH and BERT are not just metadata generators; they can also create and
predict text content. Once they’ve been trained with enough source material,
BERT can guess what the next word in a sentence (or query) will be, and
SMITH can predict (and therefore construct) the next sentence in a
paragraph.
The Synonyms System
This bridges the gap between user vocabulary (a search query composed of
keywords, phrases, and operators) and document vocabulary (the content on
a webpage) by considering a set of words that are similar to each keyword in
your query. This is a lot like using a series of OR operators to account for
specific synonyms, except Google’s Synonyms System weights the actual
search terms higher than their synonyms. For instance, to get some ideas on
what to give to your nieces and nephews for Christmas, you might use this
query:
christmas gifts for kids
The Synonyms System might translate this into a query that looks more like
this:
 christmas | holiday gifts | presents kids | children | boys | girls | teens
Except each of the terms after the OR operators would be less important than
the original terms.
These are not always synonyms in the literal sense; they’re just words that
Google has determined are closely related in intent. In some instances the
Synonyms System might even associate a keyword with its linguistic
antonym because both terms would yield similar results. For instance the
system could associate the word buy with the word sell because if you want
to buy something, then you’re looking for a site that sells it. Similarly, a
common abbreviation like GM is interpreted as General Motors, genetically
modified, or general manager according to the context around it.
MUM
Whereas BERT was designed to answer simple questions by processing
many small samples of natural language text content, the Multitask Unified
Model (MUM)—which Google claims is 1000 times more powerful—was
designed to answer complex questions through a technique known as
transfer learning. This means that MUM works at a higher level, relying on
language models that have already been built and refined through BERT and
other similar algorithms that take different approaches to language
processing. With access to so many different language models for both text
and images, Google hopes that MUM will reduce the number of searches
required to compare and contrast two similar subjects.
For example, let’s say you have a pet budgie (a parakeet), and one day you
get a call from your great-aunt, asking if you could adopt her pet cockatoo (a
large parrot) when she moves into an assisted living community next month.
Before you can give her an answer, you need to know whether your parakeet
knowledge and experience will be useful when applied to a bigger bird. Will
one of your current cages work? Do you need a special perch? Can the
cockatoo eat the same food as the budgie? Will they fight with each other?
The one question that underlies everything is: considering my current
expertise and resources, what extra things do I need to consider?
Unfortunately that’s not a very good search query. You might get lucky and
quickly find a blog post, article, or video that covers this exact topic in the
exact level of detail you need. More than likely, though, the answers you’re
looking for will have to be derived by extracting and combining details from
several imperfect sources that you found with several different queries.
You’ll waste a lot of time skimming over redundant or irrelevant content, and
despite all that effort you still might not get the kind of perspective you need.
Ideally—and realistically—you’d instead use Google to find a credible expert
who has dealt with both of those birds and can offer specific guidance on this
scenario. In the near future, Google hopes to use MUM to provide this kind
of specific information in a lower number of easier searches. With a natural
language query like: I already have a budgie, what do I need to know before
adopting a cockatoo? Google would understand which birds you are referring
to, and that they are or will be pets in the same house (and where that house
is in the world), and then it would build a comprehensive context around all
of those subjects for you. You might not even need to think of more queries
—a MUM-enhanced Google SERP would be able to anticipate your queries
in order of importance, starting with several ways to compare each bird in
terms of pet care, and advice from people who have both birds. Then you’d
see OneBox results for cockatoo-specific questions that you haven’t asked (or
even thought of) yet: behavior toward other pets (especially budgies), cage
and perch sizes, preferred toys, engagement activities, annual avian
veterinary costs, average lifespan in captivity, toilet training techniques, how
to deal with jealousy and tantrums, and highly-rated wing clipping and nail
trimming services near where you live.
That’s only the beginning. The next step for MUM is to cross-reference a
query between textual and graphical language models. You’d be able to take
a photo of your budgie and ask Google: will this bird get along with a
cockatoo? Or you could take a picture of a cage and ask: is this a good cage
for a cockatoo? You might even be able to put all of your bird food on a
table, take a photo of it, and ask: will a cockatoo eat this?
Even that advanced scenario still does not represent a proper replacement for
a qualified human expert, but compared to a pre-MUM Google search effort,
it provides a much more accurate impression of how much extra work and
expense it will be to adopt your great-aunt’s parrot. This level of information
is probably not enough for you to agree to adopt the cockatoo—you’d still
want to talk to an expert first—but it may be enough to convince you that you
and your parakeet would be much happier without it.
It isn’t clear what the timeline for MUM implementation is. Google
announced that it was working on MUM in mid-2021, but hasn’t yet given
examples of how it affects search results.
The Wide World of Google Services
Google is focused on search, but search is much more than a query box and a
results page. Developing a search engine requires developing related
technologies such as cloud computing and storage, data modeling, metadata,
security, content delivery, payment processing, and automation. To develop
and test these ancillary services or technologies, Google often launches new
products, some of which may appear to have little or nothing to do with Web
search. Additionally, Google has acquired many technology companies over
the past two decades, and those products and services have been integrated
into the overall Google technology pool.
This chapter describes the top Google services that aren’t focused on search,
though they are all connected to search technology in some way.
 Blogger
https://www.blogger.com
Blogger offers free blog hosting, templates and remote blogging software.
For an extra fee, you can host your blog on your own domain.
 Gmail
https://www.gmail.com
Google offers a free webmail service with plenty of storage, excellent spam
filtering, customizable tabs, and a clean and fast interface. Or if you prefer to
use a standalone mail client like Thunderbird or Outlook, you can configure
Gmail for SMTP or IMAP.
If you’re also using Google Calendar, and you have an Android smartphone,
Gmail will sync your contacts and appointments as they arrive via email. If
you book a flight and receive a confirmation email, or if you receive a
meeting invitation, Gmail will pass that to Calendar automatically.
If you need to attach a file, you have the option of hosting it via Google Drive
so that your recipient can download it separately from the email.
If you sign up for the $6 per month subscription to Google Workspace (which
is covered in detail in the “Managing Your Google Account and Data”
chapter), you’ll get a lot more storage in Gmail, advertising will be removed
from the interface, and you can configure Gmail to use your domain name.
 Google Arts and Culture
https://artsandculture.google.com
Google has partnered with many cultural institutions and museums to provide
an archive of cultural artifacts online, including tens of thousands of high-
resolution photos of classical artwork, which can be sorted by artist, art era,
or collection. Collections of artifacts and art are accompanied by stories of
the artists and scientists behind them. You can also go on a virtual tour of
landmark museums and libraries all around the world.
 Google Calendar
https://calendar.google.com
This is Google’s calendar, scheduling, and reminder service. Standalone it’s
not any more useful than Outlook or any other competitor. However, the
more Google apps you connect to it, the more utility it has. You can access
other calendars that have been shared by co-workers or family members, and
invite other people to respond to your event or meeting invitations. If
someone sends a calendar request to your Gmail account, Google Calendar
will offer to add it for you. The same is true for airline confirmations, hotel
reservations, and anything else that Calendar determines to be an
appointment, event, or reservation.
 Google Chrome
https://www.google.com/chrome
Google’s Chrome browser is so widely used that it almost doesn’t make
sense to cover it in this book. Instead of explaining the basics, I’ll skip to the
more advanced options and features that many people aren’t aware of.
First of all, you can connect your Google account to Chrome. This will
enable you to share one common browser context across all of your devices.
If you had a browser tab open on your desktop computer, but now you’re on
your smartphone, you can easily find that tab in Chrome’s History menu.
Here’s a comprehensive list of everything you can share across all Chrome
installations that you log into:
Apps
Autofill
Bookmarks
Extensions
History
Stored passwords
Settings
Themes and wallpapers
Open tabs
Stored payment methods and addresses
Apps and Extensions
https://chrome.google.com/webstore
The Chrome Web Store has hundreds of optional enhancements for Chrome.
Chrome is more than just a Web browser; it’s an application platform. You
can extend or override its core functionality with extensions, change its
appearance with themes, and run entire programs inside of it—even games.
 Google Cloud Platform
https://cloud.google.com
Google Cloud Platform is a set of cloud computing resources (storage,
processing, analytics, and machine learning) and APIs that make Google’s
infrastructure available to outside companies and developers. By using
Google Cloud Platform, a development team can avoid having to buy new
hardware, which makes it easier to take risks on new projects. Some of the
world’s largest companies use Google Cloud Platform for both permanent
and temporary server resources.
 Google Colaboratory (Colab)
https://colab.research.google.com
This is a special implementation of the open-source JuPyter Notebook Project
that works with Google services and infrastructure. Colab notebooks can
contain rich text blocks, Python code blocks, and media such as images and
video. The code blocks can be run sequentially, or individually, and are
executed via Google Cloud Platform resources.
Colab is an outstanding tool for learning how to write Python scripts,
automating complex spreadsheet operations in Google Sheets, and for
documenting and demonstrating Python modules and APIs.
 Google Drive
https://drive.google.com
This is Google’s cloud storage and file sharing service. You can manage it
through the Web interface, through Windows Explorer via the Drive File
Stream application, or with a number of third-party utilities. There are also
mobile apps for Android, FireOS, and IOS, but they serve mostly as a
connector so that other apps can access files in your Drive account.
Drive is the storage service for all other Google services, most notably Gmail
and Google Photos, though you can’t directly see all of the content they store
in Drive. You cannot, for instance, delete Gmail messages through the
Google Drive interface.
Many other Google services are automatically connected to or integrated with
Drive, such as the Google Docs Editors Web-based office suite, and
Colaboratory. Any documents you create with Google Docs Editors are
automatically saved to Drive, and any compatible files (such as Word .doc or
.docx) that you store in Drive will open in Google Docs by default.
Drive is the primary method of file storage and management on Chromebook
computers, and is fully integrated into Chrome OS.
You can purchase more space for your Google Drive ala carte, or as part of a
commercial Google Workspace subscription. Google also offers free extra
Drive space to people who purchase Chromebooks.
Google Docs Editors
This is Google’s office suite within Google Drive. It includes the Docs word
processor, Sheets spreadsheet, Slides presentation builder, Drawings vector
diagram editor, Forms survey creator, Sites basic website development tool,
and Keep note-taking app. These are similar in basic functionality to the
main components of Microsoft Office 365. While Google Docs Editors may
be roughly equivalent to the Web-based versions of MS Office apps, they’re
nowhere near as capable or powerful as the desktop programs, and they can’t
be used offline or apart from Google Drive.
 Google Earth
https://earth.google.com
This shows satellite views of Earth, with the ability to zoom in almost
anywhere (national security permitting). This connects to Google Maps to
show street names, addresses, and places. In fact, you can switch between the
two services easily in case you want a realistic topology of an area that you
plan to visit.
There are three versions of Google Earth: the mobile app (for Android and
IOS), the Chrome Web app, and the desktop program. The most fully-
featured of these editions is the desktop app, or what Google calls Earth Pro.
With it, you can measure precise distances, overlay a map, and even create
movies.
Through its unique Voyager storytelling feature, Google Earth also provides
tours of UNESCO world heritage sites, art museums, baseball stadiums, and
other important historical and cultural sites.
 Google Fiber
https://fiber.google.com
This is Google’s foray into broadband Internet and TV service. It’s limited to
a few select areas of the US, with more cities planned for future expansion.
Service includes extremely fast Internet (up to 1Gb/second), HD television
channels, a DVR, and an Android app.
 Google Hangouts
https://hangouts.google.com
This is Google’s text, audio, and video chat service, similar to Skype. It’s
integrated into Gmail in the middle of the left navigation column, and it’s
available as an Android app.
 Google Keep
https://keep.google.com
This is a simple app for taking quick notes and lists. While it is technically
part of Google Docs Editors, it can be used as a standalone mobile or Web
app, though it still uses Google Drive for storage.
In addition to plain text, you can use your mobile device to take a photo of
something (such as a whiteboard or a product SKU sticker) and store it as a
note in Keep. You can then drag and drop notes to set a different order for
them in the Keep interface, pin one to the top of the interface, or ask Google
to remind you of the note on a certain date and time. This syncs to your
Google account on your Android phone to receive reminders wherever you
are.
 Google Marketing Platform
https://marketingplatform.google.com
This is a Web analytics suite composed of several previously standalone
Google services:
Google Analytics: a website traffic data collection and analysis tool.
Google Analytics is the key component in this platform because it’s
the primary data collector. You can use it standalone without
involving other aspects of the Google Marketing Platform.
Data Studio: an analysis tool that combines data from several
sources, and creates reports and dashboards to visualize Web visitor
metrics and goals.
Tag Manager: a framework for consolidating multiple third-party
tracking scripts. This improves site performance by combining all
visitor tracking code into one lightweight tag and one canonical
management interface.
Optimize: an extension of Google Analytics that enables you to
perform A/B testing on content pages, and to deploy custom
segmentation rules for certain groups of visitors.
Surveys: an easy-to-use utility that helps you create and deploy
visitor surveys on your site.
There are two tiers of service for the Google Marketing Platform. The Small
Business tier is free, but all data recorded through these services will be
collected and used by Google. The Enterprise service level is a paid upgrade
that allows you to keep your data private, adds a few extra services that help
you track marketing campaigns, and includes “360” branded editions of the
free services listed above. The 360 editions have more integrations with other
services, more filtering and funneling options, and higher limits on Web
property views and data caps, among other perks and upgrades.
 Google My Business
https://business.google.com
Google My Business is a central hub for making your business information
(address, website, phone number, menu, etc.) accessible to various Google
services. This data is essential if you want to have a good listing in Google
Maps, so if you run any kind of business, you should make sure that all of
this information is accurate and complete. Having an excellent, high-quality
Google My Business listing with several great-looking photos and lots of
honest, positive reviews is one of the most valuable things you can do to get
more customers or clients.
The data from Google My Business will show up in searches conducted from
Google Maps and, as mentioned earlier in this book, it will appear in the map
pack (three business listings underneath the map graphic) for Web search
queries that contain a location or a type of business.
 Google Nest
https://nest.com
Google Nest represents a complete line of in-home ‘smart devices’ that
connect to a central ‘smart home’ framework. You can start with one device
and add as many others as you need, and control them through your
computer, mobile device, or through voice activation in Nest devices that
support Google Assistant integration.
The Nest Learning Thermostat project began in 2011 as a smart thermostat
that could reduce heating and cooling costs by intelligently adjusting to your
schedule and preferences. Google’s parent company, Alphabet, acquired Nest
Labs in 2014, and later merged all of its ‘smart home’ devices under the Nest
umbrella, including the Google Home smart speaker and various Chromecast
media streaming devices. The Nest product line now includes a variety of
other specialized devices for home security and safety, video surveillance,
wireless networking, audio and video streaming with Google Assistant
integration, and of course the latest generation of the original Nest Learning
Thermostat.
If you need guidance on planning, installing, or configuring a Google Nest
‘smart home’ environment, you can request remote consultation and/or in-
home installation services directly from the Google Store.
 Google Pay
https://pay.google.com
Similar to PayPal and Square Cash, Google Pay is a method of transferring
money between people in the US, Singapore, and India; and can also be used
as a payment method at merchants that accept Google Pay. You can send
money to someone else’s Google Pay account, or to their email address or
phone number.
Google Pay securely stores bank account and credit card information, and
provides a processing layer between your payment methods and vendors or
individual recipients. If your phone is lost or stolen, you can quickly disable
Google Pay through the Google My Account site.
If you have loyalty rewards cards with any shops that participate in Google
Pay, you can store them along with your payment methods, and use them
when you’re eligible to earn rewards points or miles.
 Google Photos
https://photos.google.com
This is Google’s photo hosting and sharing service. It relies on Google Drive
for storage. There are a few handy photo editing tools built into the app and
the site, and unlike some photo services, you have the option of storing all of
your images in the original resolution.
If you install the Google Photos app on your mobile device, you can set it to
automatically upload all new photos you take with it. Selective sharing and
commenting/discussion is easy to set up for an individual photo or a whole
album.
 Google Play
https://play.google.com
This is Google’s storefront and content delivery and update service for
Android apps, Nexus and Nest devices, movies, and digital periodicals. If you
have an Android device, Google Play is already integrated into the operating
environment, and connected to your Google account.
If you have an Amazon Fire phone or tablet (or anything that uses the Fire
OS), Google Play is replaced by the Amazon Appstore and Prime Video.
 Google Research
https://research.google
This is where Google’s top engineers and scientists showcase their research
projects. There are many areas of study, mostly related to information
technology, but there are also categories for health, general science, and
economics. If you’re interested in the practical application of cutting-edge
research, you’ll find this site fascinating.
Google Research project pages can host just about anything, from traditional
text and image publication content, to entire datasets, source code
repositories, libraries of sound files, and even this really cool word
association game:
https://research.google.com/semantris
 Google Translate
https://translate.google.com
This service translates a word, phrase, or block of text from one language to
another. If you don’t know which language you want to translate from,
Google can usually detect it for you, though it is not always successful at
guessing single words or short phrases that are shared among multiple similar
languages.
On touchscreen devices you can handwrite a word or phrase into Google
Translate, and it will attempt to transcribe it and detect the language prior to
translation.
 Material Design
https://material.io
Material Design is a collection of open-source components, graphics, and in-
depth documentation for user interface designers, with a special focus on
mobile app development.
 Rich Media Gallery
https://www.richmediagallery.com
The Rich Media Gallery is a collection of visual and interactive content that
has been developed by Google Ads clients for recent ad campaigns. It’s an
excellent resource for marketers and designers.
In addition to the finished ads, you can browse a template database, see some
source code examples, and access a library of ad case studies. The Display
Benchmarks Tool enables marketers to compare performance between their
ad and the industry average for a variety of sizes, formats, and regions.
The Resources page offers links to Rich Media training; a free certification
course; and the Doubleclick Studio, an ad design and development tool.
 YouTube
https://www.youtube.com
YouTube is by far the most popular free digital video hosting, sharing, and
livestreaming service in the world. It’s also among the world’s largest search
engines, as measured by number of searches executed, though YouTube’s
search engine does not have anywhere near the same amount of power and
complexity as Google. Also, YouTube doesn’t index anything outside of its
own service (and there are several other important video hosting services out
there, as well as news media sites that do their own video hosting). Therefore,
if you’re performing an in-depth video search, it’s better to skip YouTube
and use the Videos tab in Google instead.
If you’re livestreaming or producing a series of videos, you can create your
own YouTube channel so that viewers can subscribe and be notified when
you post new content. You can also advertise on YouTube to try to get more
traffic to your channel and build your subscriber base, and monetize your
videos by signing up for Google AdSense and then connecting it to your
YouTube account.
Livestreaming From Chrome
YouTube also has the ability to livestream directly from the Chrome browser,
assuming you have a webcam and microphone connected:
https://www.youtube.com/webcam
Google on Mobile Devices
As mobile search continues to represent an increasingly larger part of overall
search volume, Google continues to improve its mobile search platform.
Mobile search differs from desktop search in that it is biased toward results
that are relevant to your current location. That’s because people more often
use mobile search for things like finding local entertainment events; making
reservations for transportation, lodging, or dinner; and to get walking or
driving directions.
This chapter covers the mobile search apps and services that haven’t already
been introduced in previous chapters.
 The Android Mobile Operating System
https://www.android.com
Google develops the world’s most popular mobile operating system:
Android. It’s secure, stable, and easily updated and upgraded. You don’t have
to do anything to get it; Android is preinstalled on all compatible mobile
phones, tablets, wearables, ‘smart home’ and streaming devices, and even
some cars. There are currently more than 2.5 billion active Android devices
in the world.
Android is open source software comprised of various mobile device
frameworks and application programming interfaces on top of the Linux
kernel. Google develops and maintains the basic core of Android, but it’s by
no means the largest Android vendor—in fact, it’s not even in the top five—
that honor belongs to Samsung. Every original equipment manufacturer
(OEM) that makes Android-based devices customizes it in a variety of ways:
replacing part or all of the default user interface, replacing native apps with
proprietary alternatives, preinstalling apps (also known as bloatware),
adding specific functionality for special hardware or wireless carrier services,
or disabling certain features to reserve them for premium services (such as
the ability to share your mobile data connection via tethering). The level of
customization among Android OEMs varies from mild to extreme. On the
mild end, Google applies a minimal set of Android customizations to its Pixel
devices; on the extreme end, Amazon rips out everything Google-oriented
(including the Google Play Store), replaces it with Amazon alternatives, and
rebrands it as Fire OS.
Google’s flagship Android devices use the Pixel and Nexus brand names, and
are available through the Google Play Store. Pixel devices are entirely
engineered by Google; Nexus devices are co-engineered by Google and its
hardware partners (such as HTC, LG, and Samsung).
Android Auto
Android Auto is a simplified interface overlay for your mobile phone that
makes it safer to use while in a moving car. The interface controls are larger
and easier to read and see, which requires less concentration and distraction
than the standard Android interface, and enables you to switch among apps
and functions that you would typically use in a car, such as a music player,
voice and text communications, and driving directions.
Android Auto is also available for in-dash touchscreen interfaces in some
newer-model cars. When your phone is connected to the car, you can choose
to switch the in-dash screen to Android Auto. Not only is this a larger, more
easily seen display than your smartphone, it’s also a safer and more
convenient way to interact with your phone while driving.
LineageOS
https://lineageos.org
Formerly known as CyanogenMod, the LineageOS project uses the open-
source Android source code to build custom operating system images that can
replace the default version of Android on more than 100 models of (mostly
older) smartphones and tablets.
OEMs don’t usually continue to update their custom versions of Android for
more than a few years, so if you want the modern Android experience (or if
you want new security updates) on an older device, LineageOS may be your
only option. Aside from always being up-to-date, LineageOS has many
advantages over vendor-supplied versions of Android: no bloatware, better
performance, a smaller storage footprint, a wider range of interface
customizations, expanded privacy and security tools, and in many instances it
can access parts of the hardware that are disabled by the vendor. The
downside is that it’s a complicated process to install it, and there aren’t
usually any builds for newer mobile devices.
 The Google Chrome Operating System
This is a Linux-based operating system designed for (and preinstalled on) the
Chromebook line of notebook and tablet devices. While it is also open-source
and based on the Linux kernel, and (as of 2016) will run most Android apps
via the Google Play Store, Chrome OS is not developed from or even closely
related to Android.
Chrome OS is a minimalist operating system designed specifically for
minimalist Chromebook hardware, and its primary purpose is to serve as a
platform for the Chrome browser. It’s exceptionally stable, secure, power-
efficient, doesn’t require a fast CPU to perform decently, and it natively
connects to Google Drive for storage and file handling.
Chromebooks are not traditional laptops. With the exception of a handful of
Linux packages, these devices will not run any desktop software beyond the
apps listed in the Chrome Web Store or the Google Play Store.
 The Google Mobile App
The Google app is more than just a search bar widget on your home screen; it
links your device to your Google account, controls most of your system
settings, shows you a customized news feed, and acts as an interface for a set
of extra on-device search features and hands-free functions.
The Google app is also tightly integrated with the Google Assistant service
(which is covered later in this chapter), though you don’t need to have the
Google Assistant app installed in order to use most of the special features of
the Google app.
All Android devices (except for those that use Amazon’s Fire OS) have the
Google app preinstalled. If you’re using an iPad or iPhone, you’ll have to
install the Google app manually through the Apple App Store.
The subsections below explain the Google app’s main functions.
Collections
Collections enable you to save the search context of anything you find via the
Google app. If you see something on the Web that you want to easily come
back to later, you’d usually use your browser’s bookmark function to save the
URL. The Google mobile app takes this concept one step further by saving
the search history that led to that result. It doesn’t even have to be a Web
address; it can be a link to a specific app context on your mobile device, such
as a comment thread in the Reddit app, or a photo in Google Photos.
Let’s reuse an example from earlier in this book: you’re planning a wedding
in Chicago. If you use the Google app to search for a photographer, and find
one you like, you can save that page to a ‘wedding’ collection. Later in the
day you search for caterers, but can’t decide among three of them, so you add
all three to the collection. At any point in the future, you can come back to
your wedding collection and view it as a set of information cards representing
each item you saved. When Google has enough contextual information about
your collection to guess your intention, it will begin to make suggestions
under a Recommended For You heading.
To add something to a collection, look for the rectangular ribbon icon in the
upper right corner of the Google app screen (sometimes it has the word
SAVE underneath it). A message will pop up explaining that it’s been added
to a certain collection; if you want to save it to a different collection, just tap
on that message to change it. Collections are managed from the Google app
via the Collections icon at the bottom of the screen.
The Discover Feed
This is a simple news feed based on your search history, collections, and
other data from your connected Google services, and it’s the default view
when you open the Google app. The Discover feed is limited to this
personalized scope; if you want a wide-ranging set of news stories from
multiple sources, then the Google News app is a better option.
Search Within Apps
The Google app can search within many of the other apps installed on your
phone, assuming they have in-app search functions. To search within an app,
start your query with the word search followed by the app name, then the
word for, then your search terms or phrases. Here are some examples:
search spotify for garbage
search goodreads for “google power search”
If Google detects the app on your device, it will give you an information card
that asks if you’d like to search within that app. If you tap on the card, the
app will open and your search query will be executed in its native search
function.
Voice Transcription and Voice Activation
It’s often more convenient (and safer) to speak rather than type, especially
while you’re driving or walking. By tapping the microphone icon in any
Google search bar, you can speak your query instead of typing it, and your
words will be translated to text. Voice search can also be configured to use
text-to-speech to read search results aloud.
This works on the Google homepage (desktop and mobile), and in all of
Google’s mobile apps. Just click the microphone icon next to the search field,
then speak your query when the app tells you to.
If you want to go totally hands-free, you can skip the microphone icon by
setting the Google app to constantly listen for the phrase “Hey Google”
(older versions of Android may use the phrase “OK Google” instead).
Whenever you say that, the Google app will start listening for commands. On
most devices this feature is disabled by default. To enable it, go to the
Settings menu in the Google app, then select Voice, then Voice Match, then
toggle the Hey Google slider. From there you can choose whether you want
voice activation to always be on, or only while driving; and you can retrain
the voice model if the app isn’t responding to the way you pronounce “Hey
Google.”
If you use voice commands often, you should consider installing and
configuring the Google Assistant, which has a much wider range of
capabilities.
Reminders
If you’ve used Google Calendar or Assistant to create reminder notifications,
you can see a list of them in the Google app by tapping the More icon in the
lower right corner, then tapping Reminders.
You can create reminders by hand in Google Calendar, or you can use
Google Assistant by typing create a reminder into the Google search bar (or
by speaking it, if you have voice transcription or Hey Google voice activation
enabled), followed by the details of what you want to be reminded of, and
when. Here are some examples:
Create a reminder to buy milk when I stop at the gas station
Create a reminder to pay the parking meter in two hours
Create a reminder to call the dentist after lunch
After executing a create a reminder query, Google Assistant will pop up at
the bottom of the screen and ask you to confirm the details and configure
other reminder options.
 Google Assistant
This is Google’s AI-driven digital assistant service. Most of Google’s mobile
apps and services are connected to the Google Assistant in some way, as are
dozens of the most popular non-Google Android apps. You can use the
Google Assistant to automate a wide range of connected tasks, such as to call,
text, or email someone from your contacts list; retrieve driving directions
from Google Maps; play a YouTube Music or Pandora playlist; create a
calendar appointment; or (if you have a Google Nest-connected home) check
to see if the lights are on in your house.
To get the most out of Google Assistant, your Contacts, Calendar, and Maps
services should be configured to align with your intent. The subsections
below explain the key configuration tasks for getting the most out of Google
Assistant.
Data Quality in Google Contacts
Your Contacts app has fields for a name, title, physical address, email
address, and multiple phone numbers. People often add a new contact quickly
and don’t take the time to fill in the details properly later, or they have
transferred their contacts list from one phone to the next over a period of
many years, so the majority of the metadata fields are empty or wrong (such
as labeling a work phone number as ‘Home’). The more complete and
accurate your Contacts entries are, the more Google Assistant can do with
them.
For instance if you were to ask Google Assistant to call your dentist’s office,
and your dentist is listed in your Google Contacts as Dr. Rosen, and her
office address is a generic office complex with many different medical and
dental providers, then Assistant will probably ask you to be more specific. It
could also be a problem if you were to say: “Hey Google, call Dad,” and your
father’s Contact entry is his full name, or if you have multiple entries like
Dad Florida Timeshare and Dad cell and Dad work. If you were to
consolidate those entries and fill out the metadata appropriately, Google
Assistant wouldn’t need any extra steps to ensure it was calling the right
number.
Adding Metadata to Google Calendar
Similar to the Google Contacts data quality issue, your Google Calendar
entries should be as complete as possible to ensure optimal Google Assistant
integration. For instance if your next dentist appointment is in your Calendar
with the title Checkup, and it isn’t associated with your dentist’s entry in
Google Contacts, then Assistant may not accurately interpret your intent
when you say: “Hey Google, when is my next dentist appointment?”
Defining Places in Google Maps
Google Assistant relies on Google Maps for everything related to
appointment reminders and travel time estimates. In your Google Maps
settings, you can use Your Places to define nicknames for certain addresses.
The two default places are Home and Work. If you’ve favorited (starred) any
addresses that you need to remember (such as a friend’s house, or your
dentist’s office) they’ll show up in the Saved tab. The Visited tab shows
public places and businesses that Google knows you’ve visited in the past.
The more destinations you put into Your Places, the more useful the Google
Assistant service will be. Adding your regular grocery store will get you an
accurate response when you ask: “Hey Google, how late is Publix open?”
The places that correspond with appointments will enable Google Assistant
to calculate how long it’s going to take to get there, the best route to take, and
what time you should leave in order to arrive on time. You can even get a
custom notification on your device (which can be pushed to a smartwatch)
that will tell you when it’s time to leave.
 Google Lens
The Lens app enables you to search based on whatever is in the field of view
of your mobile phone’s camera. This is similar to searching for an image, but
with many more options and features. Google Lens examines the visible
image shown by your camera, then uses AI to figure out what it is on a very
low level—text, a barcode, a QR code, a famous place or painting, a
restaurant menu, a CD or DVD case—and then considers the fine-grained
details to drill down into specific results. For instance, if you’re standing in
front of Greifenstein Castle in Hesse, Germany, you can open the Lens app,
point your camera toward the castle, and Google Lens will provide results
similar to a mobile search query for this location. You can then point the
camera at the signs and plaques around the castle, and Google will translate
them from German into English (or a different language, if you prefer). If the
castle pub is open today, you can examine the menu with Google Lens and
get some reviews and recommendations.
Did you get a bunch of business cards at a conference or seminar? You can
use Lens to add them to your Google contacts. Did you see a record for sale
at an obscure music shop in London? Just point Google Lens at the cover,
and it can tell you if there’s a version of it on CD, or if there are any of them
on sale on eBay. You can even solve a Sudoku puzzle with Google Lens.
On Android devices, you can install Lens from the Google Play store. On iOS
devices, Lens is an option within the Google app, next to the microphone
icon.
 Google Voice
Google Voice is an app and a service that creates and manages virtual phone
numbers. You can forward incoming calls to physical devices according to a
set of rules you specify (such as forwarding to your desk phone during office
hours, and forwarding to your cell phone after 5PM). You can also set up
voice mail, and Google will try to transcribe it to text and send it to you in an
email. SMS messaging and message forwarding is also supported.
 Handwriting Transcription for Search
Would you prefer to write a search query by hand instead of using the
onscreen touch keyboard? You can enable the handwriting transcription
feature through this process:
1. Open a Web browser on your mobile device, and go to
www.google.com.
2. Scroll to the bottom of the page, and tap Settings, then tap Search
settings in the context menu.
3. In the Handwrite section of the page, tap Enable.
4. Scroll to the bottom of the page, and tap Save.
5. To use the handwriting function on the Google search page, click the
cursive g icon in the lower right corner, then start handwriting (with
your finger or a stylus) anywhere on the screen.
 Messages For Web
https://messages.google.com/web
If you use Google Messages as your default SMS app, you can set up the
Messages For Web service to send and receive text messages on a desktop
computer.
To enable this feature, go to messages.google.com/web on your PC, then
open the Messages app on your phone, tap the More icon (three dots) in the
upper right, then tap Messages for Web, then scan the QR code.
 Google Authenticator
If you install the Google Authenticator app through your mobile device’s app
manager, you can set up secure two-factor authentication (abbreviated as
2FA) for your Google account, as well as any app that uses your Google
account for user authentication, and other third-party companies that support
the Google Authenticator for 2FA.
With 2FA enabled, you’ll still need to provide a password when you log in,
but if you’re on an untrusted device or logging in from an unusual location,
you must also provide a temporary 6-digit code generated by the Google
Authenticator app.
There’s more information on two-factor authentication and the Google
Authenticator app in the “Account Security” section of the Managing Your
Google Account and Data chapter.
Managing Your Google Account and
Data
A Google account provides all-in-one authentication, authorization, and
storage of data and settings for all Google services, sites, and devices. It’s
possible to use some Google services on a limited basis without signing into
an account, but no customization or location-based features will be available.
The main Google search engine and YouTube don’t require logins, for
instance, but most other Google properties and all Chromebook and Android
devices require it.
This chapter covers the various types of Google accounts, and how to audit
and manage the data that they contain. I’ll also show you how to make your
account more secure, and if you want to keep Google out of your life as much
as possible, I’ll explain how to remove private information and limit the data
that Google is allowed to collect about you.
 Account Types and Upgrades
There are three types of Google accounts: personal, commercial (or
educational), and corporate. It’s possible to have more than one. Each is
explained below.
Personal Accounts
This is the everyday, normal user account that you get for free just by signing
up on google.com, or by registering an Android device. A personal account
comes with access to dozens of Google products and services. There are so
many of them that it would be silly to name them all in this book, so I’ll just
link to the official list:
https://about.google/intl/en/products
Some services are specific to Android devices, some to desktop computers,
but regardless of where or how you use it, every consumer-level Google
product and service is configured through this account.
You probably already have a Google account, even if you’re not conscious of
it. Aside from signing up directly on Google.com, you might have created
account through the following actions:
You created an account on YouTube or Gmail.
You bought and registered an Android device.
You bought and registered a Chromebook computer, or any other
device that runs the Chrome operating system (not the same thing as
the Chrome browser).
You bought something from the Google Play Store (movies, books,
apps, devices).
You downloaded the Google Chrome browser and signed into it to
save bookmarks, passwords, and preferences.
Your Google account is linked to an email address, so if you aren’t sure
whether or not you already have an account, you can request a password reset
from the account Sign In page. If you no longer have access to that email
address, then you won’t be able to recover the account connected to it, and
you’ll have to create a new one.
To create a new account, just go to the Google homepage and click Sign In
in the upper right corner, then follow the instructions.
 Your Account Homepage
https://myaccount.google.com
This is the central management hub for your account. After logging in, you
should see the Home screen, with a menu on the left, and a few cards in the
main content pane that say things like Privacy & Personalization and
Account Storage. If there are any urgent account issues to address, they’ll be
on this page. (If you see a card that says Security Issues Found, don’t panic.
I’ll explain what to do about that later in this chapter.)
If you only see a short list of items in the center of the screen, and a message
below them that says “Upgrade to a common and recent browser to modify
Security, Language, Data Tools, and account preferences,” then your browser
is unsupported or out of date, and you’ll have to update it or switch to
Chrome or Firefox in order to make substantial changes to your account. If
you get this message and you’re already using Chrome, then you need to
manually update it by going to the Settings menu in Chrome (the three dots
in the upper right corner), then selecting Help, then About Chrome.
Android-Specific Features
You can also view and change many of your Google account settings on your
Android device by going to the Settings menu (the gear icon), then selecting
Google Services & Preferences.
When you buy an Android device and turn it on for the first time, you’ll be
asked for your Google account credentials. Unless you have a good reason to
create a completely separate and isolated account, you should use your
existing Google account or Google Workspace credentials. This will enable
you to find or remotely disable your Android device if it is lost or stolen, and
it will also give you the power to automatically backup and sync all content
stored on your phone or tablet.
If you want to switch your Android device to a different Google account, go
to the Settings menu, then select Users & Accounts, and tap on Google.
However, if you’re going to sell or give away your Android phone (and
you’ve already backed up all the data on it), it’s better to perform a complete
factory reset instead of just switching Google accounts. To do that, go to
Settings, then System, then tap on Reset.
Speaking of backups, it’s a good idea to make sure you’ve got them enabled.
Go to the Settings menu (the gear icon), then tap System, then Backup. The
option for Back up to Google Drive should be in the “on” position (with the
dot on the right side of the bar). Then go back two levels, tap on Users &
Accounts, tap on Google, then tap on Account Sync. Pretty much everything
on this screen should be in the “on” position, except Google Play Movies &
TV (unless you want to download all of your Google Play media to your
device, which could take up a lot of storage space).
Some carriers and phone manufacturers provide their own cloud backup
services that overlap with Google. If those services are free, it probably
doesn’t hurt to leave them enabled, with the possible exception of photo
backups, which can eat up a lot of time, battery, and bandwidth. But if you’re
going to pick just one, my opinion is that Google is superior. It’s
synchronized with the Google services you use on your PC (Gmail, Calendar,
Contacts), and it’s carrier- and manufacturer-agnostic, so if you switch to a
different mobile provider or to a different brand of Android phone, you won’t
have any trouble migrating. If you want to move from Android to Apple,
you’ll be able to use the Move to iOS app in the Google Play Store.
Google One
https://one.google.com
A personal Google account is free, as are all of the services it provides.
Sometimes you need more, though. By upgrading to a Google One account,
you get more storage in Drive, online tech support for Google services, and
the ability to add up to 5 family members to your account.
There are three levels of service at $20, $30, and $100 per year for 100, 200,
and 2000 gigabytes of data storage, respectively. The more expensive plans
also include some extra benefits like Google Play credits and discounts, and
access to the Google One VPN Android app, which encrypts your phone’s
network traffic and masks its IP address.
Google Workspace
https://workspace.google.com
Google Workspace (formerly known as G Suite) is similar to Google One,
but has some extra benefits that are more useful for business users. In
addition to extra storage space in Drive, a Google Workspace account
includes:
Extra services exclusive to Google Workspace, such as Currents,
 Jamboard, and App Maker.
The ability to use a domain name with Gmail.
The ability to create multiple user accounts with shared resources
under one central management service.
24/7 live tech support.
The entry-level cost for Google Workspace is $6 per user per month. Large-
scale corporate plans are also available.
Each Google Workspace user account is individually managed through the
same myaccount.google.com page as a free personal account, though the
menus and options may be different depending on the permissions granted by
the Super Admin user.
The Google Workspace Admin Console
https://admin.google.com
This is the management hub for all low-level Workspace options, including
domain configuration, user and group management, and access permissions.
You can add or remove Google services, set user-level restrictions, and audit
resource usage.
Only the Super Admin user account can log into the Admin Console.
The Google Admin app
The Admin Console’s user and group management functions are also
available through the Google Admin app, which is free in the Google Play
Store.
Google Cloud Identity
https://cloud.google.com/identity
The Google Cloud Platform has its own separate authentication scheme,
separate from personal and Google Workspace accounts. Google Cloud
Identity is the single sign-on (SSO) solution for Cloud Platform. You almost
certainly don’t have a Cloud Identity account, and if you do, it’s something
you use internally at a large corporation, and your IT department should
provide you with credentials and documentation.
I’m only mentioning this for the sake of completeness. Technically it is a
kind of Google account, but I’d be surprised if more than a handful of readers
actually had one of these.
 Account Security
Security is a process, not an event; more specifically, it is the process of
making it more difficult (not impossible—just very difficult) for an attacker
to compromise your account. Attackers are always looking for easy targets,
and there are plenty to choose from. Even a few minor changes can take you
out of the ‘easy target’ pool, and make your Google account unpalatable to
the majority of identity thieves and nefarious hackers.
Security Checkup
Google makes it easy to review and improve your security measures though
the Security Checkup feature. To use it, go to the Security section of your
account homepage, then click the Get Started link inside the We keep your
account protected card.
Alternatively, when you log into your Google account homepage, you will
probably see a card titled Security issues found. This means that there are
some immediate steps you should take to make your account more secure.
These are not limited to just your Google account; they also include stored
passwords from Chrome, and sites and apps that use your Google account for
authentication. Go ahead and click the Secure Account link at the bottom of
the Security Issues Found card.
The next screen will contain a Security Checkup list of potential issues and
their severity. A green checkmark next to an item means that it’s optimized
for security; a yellow exclamation point means that there is a potential issue
that you should take a look at; a red icon means that there is a serious issue
that you should address immediately. You should still review all of the items
with green icons just to make sure there aren’t any mistakes.
The categories in the Security Checkup list are explained in the subsections
below.
Recent Security Events
If there’s been a recent sign-in from a device that you don’t usually use, it
will appear in this list. If you buy a new computer, phone, or tablet; or if you
log into a Google service on someone else’s computer, this section will
contain the time, approximate location; and some details about the device,
such as the hardware type and operating system. If there are any yellow or
red items in this list, verify them with the No, It Wasn’t Me or Yes buttons.
Before you click No, think hard about the details you’re shown. Sometimes
devices are ambiguously identified. You might have signed in from a smart
TV or media player, an e-reader, or a different Web browser.
If you’re sure there’s an unauthorized login, then you’ve got a big problem!
After you click No, Google will ask you to change your password. You
should also verify and update your email address and phone number, and
enable 2-step verification immediately.
Your Devices
This is a list of all devices that you’ve signed into your account from. Make
sure you don’t have any shared or retired devices (such as old phones or dead
computers) in this list.
If any devices need to be removed, click the three dots on the right side of
the device listing, then click Sign Out. You should probably also change
your password, just in case.
2-Step Verification
This is the most important thing you can do to maximize the security of
your account. It adds a second identification method beyond your password,
to be used whenever Google isn’t completely certain that you are the person
logging into your account. You’re almost certainly already using 2-factor
authentication on websites that handle sensitive data, such as your bank, tax
preparation service, or health insurance provider. Usually it’s in the form of a
security question, or some portion of your social security number. These are
fairly weak methods of 2-factor authentication. More secure methods involve
sending a one-time-use numeric code via email, SMS, or automated voice
call. The strongest forms of 2FA involve hardware tokens that must be
plugged into a USB port or connected via Bluetooth; or authenticator apps
(such as the Google Authenticator) that provide one-time-use codes.
Google uses a variety of trust factors to calculate the probability that a login
is legitimate, such as signing in from a new or distant location, using a
browser’s autofill feature to supply your Google password, or signing in from
a new browser or untrusted device. If there are any hints of suspicion, Google
will ask for a second authentication method beyond your password. Even
when there isn’t anything unusual, Google occasionally asks for a second
method just to make sure it’s really you.
When 2-step verification is triggered, all Google services that require
authentication will pause on all of your registered devices until the second
step is complete. This is not as much of an inconvenience as it may seem,
especially considering how much extra security it adds to your account. For
instance, if someone guessed or stole your password and tried to log into
Google Play to go on a spending spree, they would immediately be stopped
by the second authentication factor. Wherever you are at that time, you’d
receive a notification of a new login attempt, and you’d be asked to provide a
second authentication method. You’d recognize this as an unauthorized login
attempt, and you’d be able to instantly block it and change your password to
avoid more attempts. If you’re asleep or otherwise unavailable, your account
will stay locked everywhere until you provide a second authentication factor.
There are six possible secondary authentication methods; you should enable
at least three:
1. Google Prompts: Requires you to unlock one of the specified mobile
devices, then tap Yes in the login prompt that Google sends to it. You
can add this to multiple smartphones and tablets.
2. Authenticator App: Install and configure the Google Authenticator
app on a mobile device, and use it to generate short-term
authentication codes. There can be only one active Authenticator app
among your mobile devices.
3. Backup Codes: Google will generate ten single-use backup codes that
you can write down or save to a text file. If you save it to a file, you
can print the codes and keep them with your other important hard-
copy documents, or you can put it on an external storage device such
as a USB drive, CD, or memory card.
4. Voice or Text Message: Google will call or text the specified phone
number, and relay a verification code that you must use for your
secondary authentication. This can be a landline phone or
smartphone. You cannot use a Google Voice phone number for this
because you wouldn’t be able to receive any communication from
Google Voice when 2-step verification is triggered.
5. Security Key (hard token): You can purchase one or more Titan hard
token security keys from the Google Play store, or other trusted
retailer. A hard token is as close to a physical key as you can get with
digital authentication. It’s a small device (about the size of a house
 key or USB memory stick) that uses a physical or close-proximity
encrypted connection to authenticate you. Security keys can connect
via USB (A or C), NFC, or Bluetooth. Google sells Titan brand
security keys for anywhere between $25 and $40, depending on
which connection method you prefer. The downside is that you have
to keep track of this key as though it were your house key or car key,
and if you lose it, you have to immediately log into your account
(possibly with a different secondary authentication method) to
disable it. You can have multiple Titan keys for your account, so you
can keep one with you, and put one in a fireproof safe or safety
deposit box.
6. Security Key (Android): If you have a smartphone that runs Android
version 7.0 or later, you can configure it to act as a hard token. It’s
not a good idea to use the same smartphone that you have the
Authenticator app on; the two methods would be redundant on the
same device. The ‘security key’ phone does not need a data plan or
an Internet connection (beyond the initial Security Key configuration
process); all it needs is Bluetooth.
Three of these methods (Google Prompts, Authenticator App, Android
Security Key) require that you be in possession of your smartphone to
complete the second authentication factor. If your phone is lost, stolen,
damaged, or has no Internet access, then these methods won’t be available
(except the Security Key method, which only requires Bluetooth to provide
authentication). Enabling all three of these on one Android device is
redundant, since you only need one if you only have one phone. I suggest
enabling Google Prompts if you have several mobile devices connected to
your account, and enabling the Authenticator App on your main (or only)
smartphone.
The Android Security Key method is best used on an old Android phone that
you aren’t using. As long as the old phone has at least Android version 7.0,
you can set it as a trusted device in your Google account, configure it as a
Security Key, then put it in a fireproof safe or lockbox with your valuables or
important documents.
You should also enable another method that doesn’t require a smartphone. I
suggest the Backup Codes method as a third or fourth option, especially if
you need to log in when you’re away from home. Remember, though: don’t
store the backup codes in a place that requires a Google login (such as
Google Drive, Gmail, or Google Keep), and don’t store them on your
smartphone. It’s best to print them out and put that paper with other secure
documents like birth certificates and tax forms. You may want to put an
unused code in your passport and/or wallet in case your main smartphone is
lost or stolen while you’re travelling. If you lose any codes, or if you suspect
that someone may have copied them, log into your Google account
immediately and disable the old codes, then generate new ones.
Whenever you provide a secondary authentication factor, you’ll see a link on
the authentication screen that says Don’t ask again on this device. If you
follow that link, you can designate the device that triggered 2-step
verification as a trusted device. This will raise the trust level of that device,
though it does not completely eliminate the possibility of secondary
authentication triggers. You can revoke ‘trusted device’ status in the 2-step
verification configuration section of your Google account.
Third-Party Access
This is a list of third-party apps and sites that have access to some part of
your Google account. Each entry shows exactly which parts of your account
are shared.
If you see any services that you don’t use anymore or don’t recognize, click
Remove Access. If you make a mistake here and need to grant access to
something again, you’ll be prompted the next time you use that app or site.
Gmail Settings
If you’ve blocked any email addresses in Gmail, this is where they’ll be
listed.
Password Checkup
This is one of the most important parts of the Security Checkup because it
extends far beyond your Google account. The Password Checkup examines
the list of login credentials that you’ve saved to your Google account through
Chrome’s autofill feature, and compares them against an ever-growing list of
sites and services that are known to have been compromised. Adobe and
LinkedIn, for instance, are on the list because they’ve suffered data breaches
that exposed usernames and passwords. So right off the bat, if you have a
pre-breach Adobe or LinkedIn password stored in your Google account, the
Password Checkup feature will flag them as compromised passwords. Any
sites that have permanently shut down will also be flagged, since there is no
way of knowing who has access to the old site data.
Secondly, if you reused any compromised login credentials on any other sites
(which you should never do), those will be flagged as well because they’ve
been exposed. Attackers will use their list of compromised usernames and
passwords to try to log into thousands of other sites and services, hoping that
you’ve reused them there.
To change a compromised password, click the Change Password link on the
right side of the list. The URL will open in a new tab. Log in with your saved
credentials, then navigate to that site’s account page, and change the
password. You should see a popup dialogue in Chrome that notifies you that
your stored password has been changed, but the list won’t refresh until you
click the blue Update Results button at the bottom of the Password Checkup
screen.
If it’s a site you never use anymore, then alternatively you can delete that
account if there’s an option to do that. Just make sure you also delete the
entry in the list of saved passwords in your Google account.
For the dead sites, you can just delete the saved password record, but you still
must change the passwords on all other sites that you reused those credentials
on.
Some of the dead sites aren’t actually dead, they’ve just changed
authentication methods. For instance, you might have created an account on
YouTube before Google acquired it. The credentials you stored from the pre-
Google days are no longer valid, so you can delete that entry in your saved
password list. Likewise there are many discussion forums on the Web that
have switched to a different forum software package since you last visited,
and it may not have inherited the user accounts from the old one. If that’s the
case, you can remove those from the saved passwords list as well.
When all of the compromised passwords are addressed, move on to the list of
reused passwords, and accounts using a weak password. If there are
hundreds of items in these lists, then it’s going to take some time to get
through them. You’ll probably have to schedule several sessions to address
them in segments. If you only have time to do one list right now, start with
the accounts using a weak password—those are the ones most at risk of
being compromised.
During this process, you may discover that some sites have multiple login
credentials. Aside from situations where you have more than one account,
sometimes Google will save duplicate credentials when sites use different
subdomains, TLDs, or field labels for different pages that ask for login
credentials. You’ll have to either manually update or manually delete these
duplicate entries in the stored password list after you’ve updated the
canonical account credentials.
Don’t delete any stored credentials without changing the password first.
Deleting them in your Google account doesn’t make them go away, and it
certainly doesn’t address any security issues.
Creating Secure Passwords
If you’re using Chrome to save and sync your passwords to your Google
account, then there’s an easy way to generate unique and secure passwords.
When a site asks you to create a new password, just right-click inside the
password text field, and select Suggest Password… from the context menu.
A popup dialogue will appear, showing a long and complex password that
Chrome generated. Click Use Suggested Password, and both of the
password fields will auto-fill with it. These credentials will automatically be
saved in your Google account.
It’s almost impossible to remember a maximally-secure password, so you’ll
have to rely on Chrome to supply it via your Google account, or you can use
a third-party password manager such as Lastpass or Bitwarden.
Account Recovery Settings
There are two other cards in the Security section of your Google account
homepage that you should review: Signing into Google, and Ways we can
verify it’s you.
Signing Into Google
The Password line shows when you last changed your password. It’s a good
idea to change it every so often. For maximum account security, set a
Calendar event to change your password quarterly. Otherwise, it’s up to you
to determine how old your password should be before you create a new one.
App Passwords are special authentication codes that you can use to connect
non-Google apps to your Google account. This is kind of a rare circumstance.
If you think it might apply to you, go ahead and click on the App Passwords
link to learn more about it.
If you haven’t already set up a Google Account PIN, then you should do that
now. This PIN is mostly for authorizing Google Play purchases or Google
Pay money transfers on your mobile devices, though some third-party devices
such as the Roku media player also require it.
Ways We Can Verify It’s You
It is extremely important to have a valid, accessible email address and phone
number listed in this section of your account. If there’s a security event or
suspicious activity, either of these contact options can be used to verify your
ownership and, if necessary, regain control of your account.
You can use your smartphone cell number here; but for an email address,
don’t use the same one that this account provides. If you’re locked out of
Gmail, how can Google use your Gmail address to verify you? You probably
have several email accounts that you don’t use much, such as through your
wireless or home Internet service provider, or through other big tech
companies like Facebook, Microsoft, or Apple. If you really don’t have a
second email address you can use for account recovery, you can sign up for a
dedicated email service like ProtonMail, or create a second Google account
with a different Gmail address specifically for this purpose.
Review Chrome Extensions and Android Apps
It doesn’t do much good to secure your account if you accidentally give a
malicious app or plugin the permission to access it.
To review your Chrome browser (and Chromebook) extensions, click the
More menu icon (three dots) in the upper right, then click More Tools, then
Extensions. If you see anything suspicious, or anything that you don’t use
anymore, remove it.
You should also go to the Google Play Store and review the list of apps
installed on your mobile devices. You should remove apps that you never
use, even if they’re not malicious. Just because they’re safe now doesn’t
mean they always will be, and if you need any of them sometime in the
future, you can easily reinstall them.
 Privacy Features and Restrictions
Privacy and security are not the same concept. If you’ve followed the advice
in this chapter up to this point, then your Google account will be one of the
most secure aspects of your digital presence. However, everything you store
in your Google account is collected and analyzed by Google, and everything
you do on the public Internet—searching the Web, watching videos, posting
on social media, looking for a new job—is almost certainly being tracked,
recorded, analyzed, and possibly sold by one or more third-party data
brokers. Every major consumer-facing site and service in the world is part of
this in some way, but the single largest tracker / analyzer is Google. That’s
not necessarily a bad thing—it may be a good thing!—but you should at least
be aware of your role in the information trade.
Beyond storing your settings and backing up your data, your Google account
also contains a wide range of personalization and customization options that
can save you time and effort. However, some people prefer not to trade
privacy for convenience, and the numerous data-sharing and security breach
scandals among big tech and finance companies have caused many people to
limit what a corporation can collect and share about them.
In this section, I’ll explain how to find out what information Google tracks
and collects, how to audit the metadata it has created for you, and how to
erase and limit it.
What Information Does Google Collect?
In 2016, Princeton University conducted a large-scale study on online
tracking, and concluded that at least 75% of all websites contain tracking
code used by Google, mostly for the AdSense and Analytics services. That
doesn’t include the various other similar trackers used by social media sites,
marketing companies, and online merchants.
Even if you don’t use Chrome and aren’t signed into a Google account in
another browser tab, you’re still tracked via unique identifiers, which are
similar to license plates for vehicles. They’re alphanumeric strings that
correspond with a specific device, app, or browser. Ostensibly these are used
to save preferences such as a time zone or language setting, or various search
settings. By themselves they don’t typically identify you personally, they just
identify your phone, tablet, the browser on your computer, or your activity on
YouTube when you aren’t signed into an account. Just like with license
plates, though, a unique identifier could be combined with other data to
connect those devices, services, and activities to you. Google doesn’t say
whether or when it attempts to connect unique identifiers to people; all it says
is that it creates them and uses them to collect short-term data when someone
isn’t logged into a Google account.
When you are logged into a personal Google account, here’s a detailed
breakdown of what Google collects and tracks:
Whatever you put in your profile: This includes your name, email
address, phone number, Android devices, and payment information.
Whatever Google’s corporate customers give them: Marketing
partners, advertisers, researchers, and security providers can give
Google any information they have about you, and Google will collect
that if it can.
Public information about you: If your name appears in the Google
search index—for instance, if you post your resume to a job board,
have a public social media profile, or are interviewed for a
newspaper article—then Google collects it and can associate it with
you.
Everything you say: All voice and audio features may be recorded
and analyzed, including actual recordings of your voice if you
perform a voice search or use Google Assistant. If you use Google
Voice, literally everything you do with it is collected.
All of your SMS text messages: If you use any of Google’s apps for
SMS, Google collects the messages, recipients, timestamps, and
other content.
Device, app, and browser metadata: Google collects information
about every device and browser that you use with any of its services.
The depth of this information varies, but can include the browser
version, operating system version, mobile carrier and phone number,
mobile device model number, IP address, screen resolution, crash
reports (if an app or browser crashes while using a Google service), a
list of installed apps, and other similar data.
Search history: All forms of search across all Google services is
 recorded.
Purchase history: All purchases from the Google Play Store, or via
the Google Pay app, are collected.
Ad interactions and mouse movements: If you click on or
otherwise interact with an ad, Google records the context around it.
Mouse cursor movements on or near ads, and even interaction with
non-ad elements on a SERP or other page or service with Google
Ads may also be recorded.
Contacts and email addresses: Previously Google analyzed the
content of your email and served ads in the Gmail client based on
what it recorded. Google claims that it no longer does this; instead it
uses the normal ad personalization algorithm based on your Web
activity. However, Google does analyze your Contacts list and the
to/from fields in emails, to provide recipient suggestions when
composing a new message.
YouTube: Your search history, watch history, lists, subscriptions, all
of the videos you’ve uploaded, all of the comments and votes you’ve
made, and anything else you do on YouTube is collected.
Location data: In Google Maps and Waze, your driving directions,
navigation routes, pins, and favorites are all collected. Furthermore, a
variety of location information (such as your IP address, nearby wi-fi
access points, cell towers, Bluetooth connections, GPS coordinates,
and any other sensor data) may be collected by any Google apps or
services that have access to it.
Drive: Everything stored in Google Drive is collected by Google,
including all documents, images, and other content.
Much of this doesn’t apply to Google Workspace and Google Cloud Platform
accounts, which do not have any advertising, and have stricter privacy
controls.
For more detailed information about Google’s data policies and practices, go
to:
https://safety.google/privacy/data
Cookies, FLoC, and the Chrome Privacy Sandbox
The easiest and most common method that Web developers use to passively
collect user data is through cookies, which are relatively small files that store
user-specific information such as preferences, account information, recent
site activity, and the contents of a shopping cart. Your browser automatically
downloads cookies and keeps them for a prescribed length of time, or until
you manually delete them.
First-party cookies are created and used only by the site that you’re visiting,
and are generally not harmful—in fact most sites won’t work properly
without them.
Third-party cookies are created by code that is hosted on some other site
than the one you’re visiting. The social media ‘share’ icons that you often see
around the Web are one visible example of third-party cookie usage. If you’re
on someone’s blog, and you click the ‘Like on Facebook’ button at the end of
their post, Facebook’s third-party cookie will connect your Facebook account
with the activity on the blog you’re reading, as well as every other page that
is open in every tab in the same browser. If any of those pages use Facebook
code, they may then be altered to be more personal (or more appealing) to
you.
Less visible than ‘Like us’ buttons are transparent 1x1 square pixels
embedded in every page by marketing, advertising, and analytics companies.
They load along with the rest of the page content, and require no interaction
from you at all. When those tiny invisible dots are loaded by your browser,
they trigger code that puts third-party cookies to work, altering page content
and recording as much information about you as is legally allowed. It isn’t
uncommon for a page on a high-traffic site to simultaneously load 10 or more
of these invisible trackers, each supplying data to a different analytics,
advertising, or marketing service.
Despite its current reliance on third-party cookies to drive its advertising-
centric business model, Google has vowed to stop supporting them in its
Chrome browser in 2022. This isn’t just a PR stunt; privacy and personal
information control have been gradually working their way into laws and
regulations throughout the world. In order to continue operating in an
increasing number of nations and states, Google and other tech companies
must find a way to market to people in a less personally-targeted way.
The first phase of the transition toward greater privacy came in January 2020,
when Google began testing a new Chrome feature called Privacy Sandbox
which blocks third-party cookies that are insecure or unreasonably invasive.
A year later, the Privacy Sandbox gained initial support for Google’s
Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC) algorithm, which replaces
individual user targeting with the broader concept of marketing to cohorts
(groups of people who share similar interests). FLoC is an AI model that
works much like traditional polling, statistics, and print media marketing. It
sorts people into groups, then analyzes their online behavior and preferences
in collective.
In theory FLoC is a good alternative to third-party cookies, but it may not
satisfy all privacy laws around the world, and both Google’s competitors and
the privacy-centric Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) say that it’s still a
major problem for people who don’t want to be tracked on the Internet.
As of the publication of this book, it remains to be seen if Google’s FLoC
project will be adopted by browsers beyond Chrome. Without further changes
to the algorithm, wider adoption seems unlikely, considering all substantial
Chrome derivatives (Brave, Edge, Opera, Vivaldi) have vowed not to support
it because it still violates their standards for privacy.
What is Your Data Being Used For?
Google uses data about you for four main purposes:
1. To create enhanced personalization of your apps, services, and
devices.
2. To learn about how people use its products and services.
3. To learn more about human language.
4. And above all else: to try to encourage you to click on high-value ads.
In service of these goals, Google uses its trackers to piece together the
various journeys you take through the Web, making note of what you search
for, where you end up, how long you spend on each site, and what you click
on along the way. Whenever you see a Google Ads frame anywhere on the
Web, it has been tailored specifically to you and what Google thinks you
want to do or buy. In the absence of (or in combination with) this tracking
data, Google would show you ads that relate to the page content or search
terms. Those generic ads would probably have a lower cost per click and a
lower clickthrough rate than the highly-targeted ads driven by tracking data.
Remember: Google may be at the forefront of search technology, but most of
its revenue comes from advertising. Nearly everything Google does, from
mapping residential streets to buying mobile technology patent portfolios to
developing artificial intelligence for natural language processing, is
ultimately in service of its advertising business.
I want to make it clear that Google isn’t the only company tracking you.
Facebook and Amazon are major trackers and data collectors, too. Wireless
carriers and ISPs such as Verizon, AT&T, and Comcast are analyzing traffic
and collecting data on their customers. Content providers such as Netflix,
Hulu, and Spotify have to collect accurate subscriber activity so that
copyright holders can be appropriately paid. Apple, Samsung, and Microsoft
do much of the same tracking that Google does on the Web and on mobile
devices.
This isn’t new or unique to the Internet. For decades, consumer credit
agencies like Experian, TransUnion, and Equifax have been tracking as many
of your offline financial details as they can—your debts, assets, accounts,
contact information, and employment history. Lower-profile data aggregators
and brokers like LexisNexis Risk Solutions (formerly Choicepoint) and
ChexSystems collect your insurance history and financial transaction data.
Why are these companies tracking you? Follow the money. Google wants to
show you ads that you’re likely to click on; Amazon wants to sell you stuff;
Netflix wants you to build an endless backlog of shows and movies so that
your subscription never gets cancelled. Facebook and other social media sites
want more engagement from you.
Facebook has already been caught giving away some of its user data to third-
party marketing companies and political consultancies, but it also uses that
data internally for its own advertising business, and to increase engagement.
What Could Go Wrong?
Just reading through the list of data that Google collects about you is enough
to inspire paranoia, but let’s set aside the crazy conspiracy theories, and focus
on the more realistic scenarios involving the data Google collects about you.
What could go wrong?
It Could Get Stolen
Ideally the data you store online would be encrypted at all times: on your
device, over the network, and on the server where it is stored; and the only
person who had the keys to decrypt that data would be you. This encryption
paradigm is known as zero-knowledge (or no-knowledge), meaning that the
service provider does not have the power to decrypt your data, and it’s the
standard policy at the most secure and trustworthy service providers.
Assuming that you’re using a strong encryption method, without the
encryption key no one in the galaxy except you could decrypt your data,
including law enforcement. Employees of that service provider could not
snoop or spy on customers, and remote intrusions by hackers wouldn’t put
your data at risk. This is what companies like ProtonMail and SpiderOak do.
Google, unfortunately, doesn’t do this for its consumer-grade services. It does
offer stronger encryption for its commercial Workspace and Cloud Platform
services, but for personal accounts it does not. Your data is encrypted in
transport and while ‘at rest’ on Google’s servers, but Google has the power to
decrypt it, and it will do so in order to collect and analyze it, or to hand it
over to law enforcement. While this helps prevent data leaks through remote
intrusion, it doesn’t prevent Google employees or contractors from snooping,
spying, stalking, or stealing.
Corporate and Foreign Influence
The most obvious issue with mass data collection is that Google can use it to
help its advertising clients create content that will influence you to make a
decision that will benefit them at your expense. That’s basically what
marketing is—an attempt to influence the prospective buyers in a target
market.
In principle this is nothing new. Advertisements have always been a source of
influence, from the town criers of the old world to the modern Google Ads in
your search results. What is new is the degree of specificity that Google can
provide to its ad clients. In the pre-Google days, advertisers could only offer
vague approximations of the number of people an ad might reach, and their
demographics. As a potential client, you didn’t usually have access to the
data behind these projections, or the methods used to collect it; you just had
to take it on faith that the commissioned sales rep was telling the truth about
the Sunday newspaper having a circulation of one million people in the
metropolitan area, mostly between the ages of 35 and 49 and with an income
between $35,000 and $55,000 per year. Just a few years ago—within your
lifetime—that’s about as good as you could get with ad targeting. Then you
paid for an ad upfront and hoped for the best, and unless you had some way
of identifying new customers who saw the ad (such as a coupon unique to the
ad, or a simple statement like “mention this ad for a 10% discount”), you had
no idea whether it was effective.
Even today, many people in the US still get an unwanted paperback phone
book dropped in their driveway or on their doorstep each year. The company
that publishes those phone books is making money by selling ads in it, and
it’s telling its clients that it has a massive circulation because it drops off all
those phone books at all those homes, but we all know that nearly every one
of them goes straight into the recycling bin, just as many ‘free’ newspapers
do.
By contrast, Google (and social media platforms like Facebook) makes it
possible to target an audience with laser precision, gives you the freedom to
pay as you go and stop the campaign at any time, and provides access to
near-real-time view and click data. That’s why your data is so important to
Google; the more it knows about you, the better targeting it has for ads.
That’s great for advertising clients, but potentially bad for you as the normal
Web user. You’re now more likely to click those ads than ever before. Maybe
that means you spend more money on more stuff than you would have if you
didn’t use Google, or maybe it means that you spend the same amount of
money differently.
It also means that you can be targeted by propaganda and disinformation. Not
all advertisers are trying to get your money; some are trying to get your votes
or alter your beliefs. As explained in the “Optimal Query Technique” chapter
earlier in this book, foreign governments, think tanks, political action
committees, and other entities put a lot of money and effort into spreading
lies on the Internet. The more data about you they have, the better they can
target you with propaganda that could sway your political allegiances and
influence your votes. Even very ‘smart’ people are not immune to well-
crafted propaganda.
Law Enforcement Might Make a Big Mistake
If you’re an Android user, Google is tracking and recording your location
history, and storing it in a private database called Sensorvault. Even if you
have an iPhone, if you’re using Google’s services, Google is still recording
your whereabouts. This fine-grained location data is provided to US local or
federal law enforcement officers upon request via a geofencing warrant.
Police have long been able to obtain basic tracking data from cell providers,
but Sensorvault data is much more accurate than old-fashioned cell tower
triangulation coordinates. When police or FBI agents are having a difficult
time coming up with reasonable suspects or witnesses after a major crime is
committed, they obtain a geofencing warrant and use Sensorvault data to give
them a topographical view of the precise paths people (or rather, their
phones) took through a crime scene area. If they want to identify any of those
people, then Google will provide their personal information.
Sometimes the police rely too heavily on this data. If you happen to be in the
vicinity of a crime and are the only person carrying a cell phone, then you
might be considered a prime suspect. There have been several documented
cases where innocent people have been harassed and falsely accused of
crimes via geofencing warrants. In a New York Times article from April 13,
2019 entitled “Tracking Phones, Google Is a Dragnet for the Police,” cops
used Sensorvault data to select an innocent man as a murder suspect. Despite
there being no motive or any non-Sensorvault evidence, and having an alibi
with credible witnesses, the police arrested him while he was at work. As a
result, his car was repossessed, he lost his job, and had to spend time in jail. It
isn’t totally clear why the Sensorvault data led to his arrest, but it had
something to do with occasionally checking his messages from other people’s
Android devices. Another well-documented case was exposed in an NBC
News story on March 7, 2020 entitled “Google tracked his bike ride past a
burglarized home. That made him a suspect.”
Google isn’t the only threat in situations like this. Any kind of mapping
service or fitness tracker could collect data about you that law enforcement
could use to mistakenly arrest you.
You Could Get Doxed and Harassed
Apps like Runkeeper and Strava (among many others) ostensibly help you
track your outdoor exercise patterns and help you connect with a community
of locals who share the same activities. But when you help people connect to
strangers, you reveal some data about them that can be used for harm.
Even if you don’t commit a crime or do or say something that the Internet
deems worthy of abuse, an angry online mob can ruin your life because your
data mistakenly suggests that you were the guilty party.
For instance a BBC report from June 9, 2020 entitled “Internet sleuths name
wrong man in police appeal” reveals that the wrong man was identified in a
viral video about allegedly racist behavior on a Maryland bike trail. He was
intensely harassed by a mob of bullies from Twitter and other social media
sites, and police had to patrol near his home to protect him from threats of
physical harm. Even after he was publicly exonerated, most of the people
who threatened and abused him did not put the same level of effort into
repairing the damage as they’d put into causing it. And in a well-documented
case in 2013, Reddit users who were attempting to figure out the identities of
the Boston Marathon bombing suspects ended up accusing several innocent
people, including Sunil Tripathi, who subsequently committed suicide due to
the extreme abuse that he and his family were subjected to.
Even without location tracking data, all someone needs to know in order to
harass you is your current home address, or the name of your employer. If
this information is in the Google search index, and you can prove that you are
being harassed because of this, and you are not a public figure, and whatever
you’re being harassed about is not a crime or ‘in the public interest’
according to Google’s judgement, then you can submit a request to have it
removed from the index. That doesn’t mean it’s removed from the sites that
published it, but it will make it harder to find. By that point, though, it’s
probably too late to do much good.
More Spam and Junk Mail
As mentioned earlier in this book, the era of third-party cookies on websites
is coming to an end due to various government regulations and Google’s
policies for its Chrome Web browser, but there are still some privacy
concerns regarding tracking and data collection technologies. Without
signing up for anything or consciously giving any information away, you can
find yourself on the receiving end of both email spam and physical junk mail
because one of the sites you visited was able to use cookies, data brokers, and
‘marketing partners’ to piece together who you were, then either added you to
a mailing list, or sold you as a qualified lead to a marketer. Companies such
as PebblePost specialize in aggregating online data from multiple sources,
then using it to send highly-targeted ‘snail mail’ to people.
It’s unclear how much of this data comes from Google and/or its ‘trusted
partners,’ and how much comes from unrelated sources, but Google is at very
least a large-scale enabler for other companies. Google can follow you
through your entire search journey, and record every site you visit, every link
you click on, and every movement of your mouse cursor. It participates in
cookie matching schemes that enable third-party advertisers to combine their
cookie data with Google’s, and it makes you individually targetable through
the Google Ads Customer Match program, which allows advertisers to
provide a list of people’s names, email addresses, and other personal
information for ad targeting purposes.
Why You Might Want Google to Collect Data
Most of the things that can go wrong with personal data collection are either
minor annoyances or rare and random tragedies. Before you go erasing
yourself from the whole Internet, consider some of the reasons why you
might want to enable (either temporarily or long-term) some data collection
and tracking tools.
Find a Lost or Stolen Device
If your Android phone or tablet is lost or stolen, you have the power to wipe
the storage, disable the device, and/or track its location remotely. That is, if
you’ve left the default-enabled Find My Device service on. If you haven’t,
then start shopping for a new mobile device.
Easily Backup Your Android Data
While there are several Android backup solutions that are more private and
secure, none of them are easier, quicker, or cheaper than Google. It might not
be a big deal to lose a lot of the content stored on your mobile device, but
losing your contacts list can be professionally devastating, and losing
irreplaceable photos of loved ones can be truly heartbreaking. Instead of
scheduling manual backups, you may want to let Google backup everything
for you, especially if your phone doesn’t have much sensitive information
anyway.
Assemble a Group in a Large Crowd
Through the Location Sharing feature of Google Maps, you can selectively
send (and later revoke) highly accurate location data to specific people. This
is the quickest and easiest way for a group of people to meet up and stay in
contact in a large, crowded venue like a stadium or theme park. You could
also use Location Sharing to help a friend, date, or client find you in a large
restaurant, lecture hall, auditorium, or theater.
This feature can be turned on and off easily, and access to it is by default
revoked after a certain period of time.
Keep Your Kids Safe
From a parental standpoint, the Location Sharing feature in Google Maps is
useful for keeping tabs on your teenager when he or she is out with friends on
a Friday night, and for finding younger children when they get lost (assuming
they have an Android phone or other connected device).
Save Money
Personalized ads aren’t necessarily a bad thing, especially if you aren’t easily
swayed by advertising. Many of us are cynical when it comes to advertising;
we don’t trust ads to tell us the truth, or to lead us to the best option.
That isn’t always the case, though, and in fact the reality may be the exact
opposite of those expectations. Successful businesses tend to be good at
advertising, and they don’t usually intend to mislead people. Scams and
dishonest ads tend to cater to people who are looking for low prices above all
else. If you’re more concerned with quality and availability, then
personalized ads can be quite helpful, especially if you’re having a hard time
finding something specific.
Google, at least, draws a definitive line between paid ads and organic search
results. Sites like Amazon don’t necessarily do that. Much of what you see in
Amazon search results and on product pages is either a paid placement or the
result of an algorithm designed to favor the highest-converting items.
Save Time
If you give Google Maps and Google Assistant access to your location data,
and specify a Home and Work address and method of travel, you can get
customized notifications that tell you when to leave for work in the morning
by applying current traffic and transit data to your route.
You can also get similar adjusted travel time and departure notifications for
all events and appointments in Google Calendar. To receive these, make sure
each Calendar item has a valid location, and that Google Maps notifications
are enabled.
Avoid Danger
It’s nice when Google Maps and Waze reroute you around traffic accidents,
speed traps, and road construction, but occasionally there’s something more
important to avoid, like a crisis or disaster that you aren’t yet aware of. This
can be a natural disaster, terrorist attack, police raid or standoff with armed
criminals, or any kind of emergency where your life may be at stake if you’re
nearby. If Google doesn’t know your location, though, it can’t warn you
about the mudslide, wildfire, or other threat along your route.
Create a Detailed Photo Book or Travel Map
Another interesting feature of Google Maps is the Timeline, which has
already been covered in detail in the “Specialized Search Tools” chapter
earlier in this book.
If you leave the Timeline and your location history on all the time, Google
will send you periodic emails with a link to your Timeline page, and some
interesting facts and statistics about your location history in the recent past,
such as how many cities you’ve visited, how many total miles you’ve
travelled, and pictures and videos you took while you were there.
If you took a big vacation, or if you like to travel recreationally, this can be a
convenient way to document your trip. You can even connect Google Photos
to your Timeline to create a digital scrapbook of your vacation, hike, or
honeymoon. If you record location and tagging metadata in Google Photos,
then you can also purchase a high-quality printed Photo Book that uses AI to
select and enhance the best photos of certain events, seasons, or people.
On a smaller scale, Timeline can record which movie you watched when you
went out to a theater, and document the last time you visited a certain
restaurant or relative’s house.
Your Timeline is private and can’t be shared, but you can export your
location history data and use it with other services such as the Location
History Visualizer. This tool offers much more than the basics offered by
Google, such as showing your Timeline in satellite view, and plotting your
history as a heat map that shows where you spent the most time:
https://locationhistoryvisualizer.com
Review Your Profile and Preferences
You have a lot of control over the data Google collects about you. The
sections below have advice and instructions for finding and changing specific
privacy settings in your Google account, starting with the guided Privacy
Checkup feature. Before you do that, though, I think it’s a good idea to take a
look at the basic personal information that Google has about you, and its
visibility on the Web. Google has a special site specifically for that purpose:
https://aboutme.google.com
You can change all of the information on this page, and control its public
visibility (except if you have a Google Workspace account, which may have
administrative restrictions on some fields). All of these settings correspond to
the following sections of your account (the menu links in the left pane of
your myaccount.google.com homepage):
Personal Info
Data and Personalization
People and Sharing
Payments and Subscriptions
If you’re concerned about anything you find on the About Me page, then you
should take a look through these sections of your account to make sure there
aren’t any surprises.
If you discover any inaccuracies, such as your name (if you’ve changed it),
location, phone number (extremely important for account security!), recovery
email address, and stored payment methods, you should correct them. It’s
fine if you want to remove any of this information (to the extent it’s allowed),
but it’s probably not a good idea for any of it to be inaccurate. If you put in a
bogus date of birth, for example, you may discover that YouTube won’t show
you any videos that might contain material inappropriate for minors.
Privacy Checkup
Unless you’ve already completed a Privacy Checkup recently, it should be
the top card in the Data & Personalization section of your account
homepage. Go ahead and click the Get Started link at the bottom of the
Take the Privacy Checkup card.
The Privacy Checkup contains a list of settings specific to how your
personal information is used by Google, how and where it is presented across
the various services that you use, and the conditions by which it will be
shared with others.
The instructions and descriptions in each setting category are thorough and
accurate, so there’s no need to reprint them here. You should go through each
one and review the settings, and decide whether you want to change
anything.
Some Google services (most notably Photos and YouTube) have separate
pages for privacy settings. There’s a list of direct links to them near the
bottom of the page.
The only specific advice I have here is that you should check the box at the
bottom of the screen that says Send me occasional reminders about these
settings. Default options, licenses, and policies change every so often, so you
should come back to the Privacy Checkup at regular intervals and spend a
few minutes reviewing the list. If this is only a marginal issue for you, I think
an annual Privacy Checkup is sufficient.
Limiting the Data That Google Retains
Google has a special site dedicated to revealing everything it knows about
your online activity:
https://myactivity.google.com
Basically it’s the central hub for all tracking data that Google has collected
about you, including your Web history, bookmarks, YouTube feedback,
location history, and voice recordings from Google Assistant.
The My Activity page is mostly self-explanatory, but there are a few things
that I want to draw your attention to in the subsections below.
Clearing Your Search History
The My Activity page contains options to delete your search history from
your account, and your Chrome browser history. From within Chrome, you
can also clear your browsing history, cookies, site settings, passwords, auto-
fill data, and cached files by pressing Ctrl-H, or by going to the main menu
(three dots in the upper right corner of the Chrome window) and selecting
History, then clicking on Clear Browsing Data. From there you can select
the data that you want to erase.
Deleting your search history will make Google’s predictions and suggestions
less accurate across all of the services, sites, and apps that you use.
Even if you aren’t signed into an account, Google uses a cookie that will
collect search history for up to 180 days. That includes all Google search
history performed in that browser, so if several people use the same browser,
their histories will be combined. You can clear this by deleting all of the
Google-related cookies in your browser. Be aware, though, that websites use
cookies to designate a browser as ‘trusted,’ so if you clear all cookies, you’ll
have to go through secondary authentication processes on sites that contain
sensitive data.
Google Takeout
https://takeout.google.com
This service enables you to export and download an archive of the data stored
in your Google account. You can select individual items such as Chrome
bookmarks or your Google Fit data, or you can export everything in a single
archive. All of the individual “download your data” links in the various parts
of your profile all lead to Google Takeout.
YouTube Watch History Settings
To pause or delete your YouTube history, expand the left menu pane on the
YouTube.com homepage by clicking the lined square in the upper left, then
click History. The pane on the far right will show a search field with various
filtering options, and these three links at the bottom:
Clear All Watch History: This erases your entire YouTube watch
history.
Pause Watch History: Stops adding to your existing watch history
until you enable it again. This does not delete anything.
Manage All Activity: This is a direct link to the YouTube Activity
Control section of your account, where you can see and delete your
watch history, and set a schedule to automatically delete your history
at certain time intervals.
Android-Specific Privacy Features
On your mobile device, you can use voice commands to ask Google Assistant
to delete up to a week’s worth of voice command history. Just say: “OK
Google, delete everything I said to you last week.” You can specify any
shorter interval of time, all the way up to “the last thing I said to you.” To
delete more history than that, or to enable or disable Google Assistant data
collection, go to this address:
https://myaccount.google.com/yourdata/assistant
In the Google Maps app, if you tap on your portrait in the upper right corner,
a menu will pop up that gives you several privacy-related options. The first is
Turn On Incognito Mode, which prevents Maps from recording any search
or location history. (This only applies to the Google Maps mobile app, not
any other app, site, or service).
The other privacy options in the Google Maps app menu are:
Your Timeline: This is a cute mashup of Google Maps history,
location data, and Google Photos. Your Timeline shows where you
went and when, and adds photos that were taken there, sort of like a
digital scrapbook diary. You can choose to receive occasional emails
 that contain data from Your Timeline.
Location Sharing: This allows you to directly share your location
coordinates with specific contacts that you select. You can choose to
leave this on indefinitely, or limit it to a specific span of time.
Your Data in Maps: This is a direct link to the Maps section of your
Google account page, where you can view or delete your saved
places, addresses, location history, and search history (within Maps),
and enable or disable ad personalization.
Limiting AdSense Tracking
https://adssettings.google.com
On this page, you can enable or disable the Ad Personalization option. This
only applies to the ads that Google shows you directly on its sites and apps; it
doesn’t apply to third-party sites that use Google AdSense code.
To opt out of third-party AdSense ad tracking (and more than 100 other ad
companies that participate in the Digital Advertising Alliance), go to this site:
https://optout.aboutads.info
Preventing Calendar Spam
Have you ever received a Google Calendar notification for something that
shouldn’t be there? By default, Google Calendar will add events that you
receive invitations to via Gmail, even if you don’t respond to them—and
even if they’re in the spam folder. Some particularly evil spammers have
discovered this loophole, and have started including event invitations in their
messages. Even though they’re in the spam folder, events will still be added
to your calendar, and you will still see the notification for it.
To fix this:
1. Go to https://calendar.google.com
2. Click the gear icon at the top of the page, slightly right of center.
3. Select the Settings menu option.
4. In the left menu pane, click Event Settings.
5. Click the drop-down box labeled Automatically add invitations, and
select No, only show invitations to which I’ve responded.
Alternatives for More Privacy
If you feel that you aren’t able to sufficiently limit Google’s ability to collect
and use information about you, then you should take a look at some viable
alternatives for search and browsing.
The DuckDuckGo search engine has many of the same features and functions
as Google, but it has a fanatical commitment to user privacy:
https://www.duckduckgo.com
There are no accounts to create or services to connect to, and none of your
search activity is collected. The DuckDuckGo developers even have a blog
where they write about privacy issues on the Internet, with a special focus on
Google:
https://spreadprivacy.com
DuckDuckGo’s search capabilities aren’t as good as Google’s. Traditional
keyword-based queries return mostly the same result set as Google, but
DuckDuckGo doesn’t have rich results or OneBox answers, and it doesn’t
interpret natural language queries. It’s good enough for most search efforts.
If you want to continue using Google, you can eliminate more of its tracking
capabilities by using a privacy-focused Web browser. The first one worth
mentioning is Brave, which is based on Chrome (and works with most
Chrome extensions), but blocks trackers by default. You can find it at:
https://brave.com
Another excellent option is the Vivaldi browser, which was designed to be
completely customizable, with a special focus on privacy. Check it out at:
https://vivaldi.com
Chrome and Firefox have ‘private browsing’ or ‘incognito’ modes that don’t
record your Web activity, but they still allow tracking code to run. You can
still stop sites from tracking you by installing the DuckDuckGo Privacy
Essentials browser extension from the DuckDuckGo homepage.
If you’re on a mobile device, you can replace the Google search bar widget
with an equivalent app from DuckDuckGo. Just search for it in Google Play
or the Apple App Store, or go to the app section of the DuckDuckGo
homepage:
https://duckduckgo.com/app
Search Exercise: Market Research
Now that you’re aware of search operators and hidden features and options
for refining searches, it’s time to put your knowledge into practice with a
real-world search exercise.
The actual search results explained here will vary over time, and will be
altered by your location and search preferences.
 A Search for Market Research in the Food Industry
For this exercise, let’s pretend that you work at a company that manufactures,
packages, and sells frozen food. You are writing a business plan for
launching a potential new product line of organic frozen peas, but you don’t
have the time or the budget to commission new studies. Therefore, your
mission is to use Google to find useful, trustworthy market research on frozen
vegetable consumption in your target market (the United States). You
definitely want to know current market trends, but it would be helpful to find
historical data as well.
Finding a Good Starting Point
Your instinct might be to begin with a broad search for market research, just
to see what Google Autocomplete recommends as query refinements. For
niche topics, that could work. However, this is a broad topic that will create a
large result set filled with irrelevant information, so you’ll have to narrow it
down a little.
A better starting point could be market research food industry, especially if
you want to consider data on related industry segments such as restaurants,
supermarkets, and caterers. That might be useful later after you’ve found
what you’re really looking for, but right now you need to get a little more
specific.
A search for market research frozen vegetables would be better, but probably
still not as laser-focused as it could be. Regardless, try it and see what you
get.
At the time of this writing, the results include a page from ibisworld.com that
lists research reports, and the fifth item is called “Frozen Food in the US
market research,” published this year. Sounds promising!
But after clicking through, you discover that the report costs $925, and you
don’t have the budget for that.
Maybe someone bought that PDF and put it up on a site that you can get to
for free. That sort of thing happens a lot, usually by accident. To check,
search for the exact document title, and limit the results to PDF files:
“frozen food in the US market research” filetype:pdf
Alas, this only yields an excerpt that shows the Table of Contents. This is
probably a dead end.
The original result set showed that there were several other research
organizations that had similar reports for sale. To find them, you’ll have to
adjust the query in a similar way, so that it focuses on documents that are
likely to be studies. Use quotes to create phrases such as “market research”
and “frozen vegetables”, and restrict the results to PDFs.
Why PDFs? Because more than any other content type, they’re likely to
contain finished, professional-quality reports with reliable data.
Here’s a good query:
“market research” “frozen vegetables” filetype:pdf
Aha! One of the top results is a 15-page report called “The Demand for
Organic Agriculture: A Study of the Frozen Pea Market.”
Unfortunately this turns out to be too old to use; it refers primarily to data
from the 1990s. That may be useful later for determining trends and making
projections, but it’s not what you’re looking for right now.
With more than 5600 results from that search, there’s room for further
refinement. Since the age of the data is the problem we’re aware of, let’s get
more specific about the years we’re interested in:
“market research” “frozen vegetables” filetype:pdf 2016..2021
This is not the same as using the custom date range options in the Tools
menu on the result page. You’re not really searching for dates as a separate
information type from text. You’re still searching for text; specifically, whole
numbers between 2016 and 2021 that appear in PDFs. The date filter (and the
after: operator) doesn’t do that; it only considers the date when the document
was added to the index, which is probably not when the document was
created. From Google’s perspective, a PDF that was created in 2008 but was
not posted to a webpage until yesterday, would probably have a publication
date of yesterday.
Now that you’ve restricted the results to documents that contain dates from
the past few years, you’ve removed potentially old data from consideration.
There are now only a few hundred documents. Unfortunately, many of the
top results are specific to other countries or regions, whereas you’re only
concerned with the United States.
The United States can be referred to in several different ways, so you could
attempt to include them all by using the OR operator:
 “market research” “frozen vegetables” filetype:pdf 2016..2021 u.s. | u.s.a. | usa | united states |
america
That will probably work well enough, but many reports may not include any
reference to the United States at all, especially if they were created for a
company that only has a US presence. One way of including those documents
in the results is to put something in the query that they all would almost
certainly have: a reference to a powerful or prominent competitor in the US
market. For frozen vegetables, a safe bet would be Birds Eye Foods:
“market research” “frozen vegetables” filetype:pdf 2016..2021 “birds eye”
Now you’re down to a handful of results, and a few of them are really good,
especially the one that includes a chart with monthly sales figures from
frozen vegetable and fruit manufacturers.
A Different Approach
The data from your first search effort is useful for your business plan, but
maybe there’s more. With that in mind, you can use this experience to alter
the previous chain of search results, and find more material for your business
plan.
You started by narrowing your search to “frozen vegetables” because that
best describes your product without getting over-specific, but the data
published by the other established companies in your industry isn’t sliced in a
way that’s useful to you. First of all they sell a lot of frozen foods, not just
vegetables, and it’s difficult to find good data on just the vegetable portion of
their businesses. Some companies may have specific brands or sub-brands for
different kinds of products, so they might have a brand specific to frozen
vegetables only. They also might have several different brands for frozen
vegetables, each one with a different kind of packaging or with something
else other than vegetables included. And in the report that you found a few
moments ago, each different kind of vegetable is in its own category, which
makes it difficult to know at a glance where these competitors stand.
Taking all of that into account, it’s evident that your query was too specific.
Just like a report may be about the US market but not actually contain the
name of the country, a report may be about frozen vegetables and not contain
the exact phrase “frozen vegetables.” Maybe you can find some “frozen
food” reports that have a section specific to vegetables. Product sub-
categories are often broken out in annual sales reports, so you might try
something like this:
“frozen vegetables | food” “annual sales” 2016..2021

The top result is from FoodBusiness News, and contains a wealth of data and
statistics on frozen vegetables. Here’s a stat from it that will be great for your
business plan: The average annual expenditure on frozen vegetables per
consumer unit is $35.70.
The reports you’ve found, and some of the other top results from these
searches, are all you need to complete the plan. Wasn’t that one of the most
efficient searches you’ve ever done, in terms of time and quality of results?
And yet you can still go further by using functions built into the Google user
interface.
Alternative Date Range and Sorting Method
The suggested query used the number range operator to search for text that
contained whole numbers between 2016 and 2021. Alternatively you could
have used the OR operator to explicitly look for certain years (actually just
numbers as far as Google’s concerned) printed in the report.
I recommended that you not use the date filter or the after: operator because
document age is not always congruent with index age. That doesn’t mean that
filtering by index age is useless. It could actually yield different results, or
provide more refined results. The best option might be to use both of these
methods together. To do that, click the Tools button underneath the right side
of the search bar on the results page. The number of search results above the
results list will be replaced with two new drop-down links labeled Any time
and All results. Click on Any time, and it will expand downward with some
pre-set options for limiting the age of the results according to the Google
index history.
You can safely limit results to those that are from 2016 and newer, because
that’s what you’re doing anyway. You still have to keep the part of the query
that explicitly defines years, though, to keep new versions of old documents
out of the results. So click on Custom range… and then enter 2016 for the
From date, and for the To date click today’s date on the calendar, then click
Go. The query will be run again, limiting results to PDFs that Google
indexed from January 1, 2016 up to today. Additionally, there’s a new search
option next to your custom date range: Sorted by relevance. Click on that,
then choose Sorted by date, and your results list will be reordered from
newest to oldest.
 Teasing Out More, Better Data
Earlier in this search exercise, you used this query and found that the results
were a little too broad:
market research frozen vegetables
When you’re searching for information on a given topic, broad queries are
not necessarily bad. They give you an idea of the context surrounding that
topic, which you can then use to create more refined queries to drill down
into specific areas of interest. This is much like the process of creating data
marts and analysis reports in business intelligence solutions.
Taking another look at the results from that broad query, some of the page
snippets indicate that the content isn’t relevant to your mission. However, the
sites where those pages are hosted may be useful if you take a closer look at
them. IBISWorld.com, for instance, looks like a good information source,
even if the pages in your current result set aren’t a good match. There are
other companies in that space, though, and they may have data you can use.
To find them, click the down arrow next to the IBISWorld.com URL in the
results list, then select Similar. Now you’ve got a variety of sites that
specialize in market research reports. You may want to bookmark them so
that you can explore them in depth later.
So far you’ve just been looking for pages and reports. What about news
stories? They often contain good data, sometimes from the same reports that
you can’t get free access to. To find them, start with this query:
competitor “birds eye”
When the results page appears, click the News link under the query field to
focus solely on news stories.
It looks like there are some potentially useful articles about Birds Eye, but
there’s also a lot of noise—news stories containing the idiomatic expression
“bird’s eye view.” You can remove that phrase from the results with the
NOT operator:
competitor “birds eye” -”birds eye view”
News articles are more ephemeral than Web search results, so I can’t print an
example here that will be relevant even one week from the time of this
writing, let alone a few months until the next update. So I’ll say that in
general, this news search query will ordinarily return some interesting results
that are worth looking at. For instance, consider these headlines that I found:
Pinnacle Foods (PF) Q4 2016 Results - Earnings Call Transcript:
Pinnacle Foods is Birds Eye’s parent company. It’s publicly-traded,
which means that earnings and quarterly reports are legally required
to reveal honest assessments of market conditions and budget
spending—that’s market research in action.
Credit Suisse upbeat on B&G despite questions in core business:
B&G Foods is Birds Eye’s chief competitor. Also a public company,
B&G may have some free market research for you in its shareholder
reports. You can learn a lot about this industry by observing how
these two market leaders fight each other.
Foods That Are a Complete Waste of Money on Amazon: This
isn’t a market research report, but it does tell you something about
how your target market is best served. Essentially this is market
research by proxy.
Publix plans to take a bite out of the Richmond grocery scene
with its own style of retailing: Publix is a chain of grocery stores in
the southeastern US. Apparently frozen vegetables are so important
that they chose to offer a major sale on them during the opening
week of the first store in a new area. This should give you some ideas
on how you might find a new angle on an established market, and
how your company can position itself with grocery chains.
Google News uses a set of extra criteria to determine what a ‘news source’ is
on the Web. To find sites that Google News ignores, you’ll have to go back
to the regular Web search tab and form a query that can find those hidden
news sources. This query might yield some interesting results from sites that
have a news subdomain:
“birds eye” –”birds eye view” site:news.*.*

That was a good guess, but there isn’t anything useful in the results. That
query may be too specific. Since you’re introducing a new restriction in the
form of news subdomains, you can take a few steps back with your previous
search refinements. A better query might be:
vegetable consumption site:news.*.*
Again, the query results will change rapidly over time because the news, by
definition, is focused on the most current information. That may make it less
reliable because it hasn’t yet been judged by a history of clicks and links.
As of this writing, I see a fantastic headline from a source that looks reliable,
the Stanford News Service: “Decadent-sounding descriptions could lead to
higher consumption of vegetables, Stanford research finds.” Wow! How’s
that for free, reliable data on branding?
 Applying Other Google Tools
Maybe if you expand your search beyond the Web, you’ll find even more
material for your plan.
Let’s start with Google Books. This query returns books on dieting and
cooking:
“birds eye” -view vegetables “green giant”

Next, let’s try Google Scholar. A broad search for frozen vegetables turns up
studies on the effects of freezing a vegetable, information on market demand
for vegetables, and methods of detecting microbial infections on frozen
vegetables. Some of that may be useful for your project.
Do you think it would it be worthwhile to search for patents and trademarks?
Source code? Will an image search reveal anything valuable? Should you
take a look at what’s listed in Google Shopping? Will Google Trends tell you
something useful about what’s happening in this industry right now? Is there
publicly-accessible data you can analyze? If this is an ongoing effort, what
queries should you create Google Alerts for, and at what interval should those
results be delivered?
 Conclusion
That’s the end of the exercise, but I’m sure you can imagine how it could
continue in many different ways across various Google sites and services.
Hopefully you’ve learned a few interesting approaches to finding valuable
information on the Web. While some of these tactics are specific to Google,
the overall strategy can be applied to any service that has a large search
index, such as eBay, YouTube, and even your corporate intranet. Large
companies like Intel, IBM, and Microsoft have huge amounts of inside
information hidden in internal documents, presentations, blogs, and forums
that employees will never find unless they have superior search skills.
Advanced Research Tactics
This chapter is specifically for search engine optimization (SEO)
practitioners and Web developers who are looking for an edge when it comes
to advanced Google skills. This sort of information changes rapidly due to the
perpetual motion of search engine development and the desire for Google
engineers to avoid being too helpful to ‘black hat’ SEOs, so soak it all up and
check the next edition of this book for updated tips and tricks.
 Using Google’s APIs
Google publishes well-documented APIs for hundreds of its services, most of
which are available to anyone with a Google Developer Profile. You can see
a complete list of them on the APIs Explorer:
https://developers.google.com/apis-explorer
APIs are most useful for Web developers and SEOs who are into Python
scripting, but power users can sometimes find interesting tricks as well, such
as with search query parameters. The simplest and most common parameters
have already been covered in the “Optimal Query Technique” chapter, but
there’s also a secret stash of advanced parameters in Appendix A near the end
of this book.
If you pay attention to how the URL changes when you interact with a
Google service, you can figure out some API-related shortcuts without
having to write any code.
Occasionally Google provides some even shorter shortcuts, but you have to
read the documentation to find them. For instance, if you’re currently logged
into your Google account, then you can instantly create new blank documents
in Google Drive by using these URLs:
docs.new
sheets.new
slides.new
forms.new
 Finding the True Number of Results
For performance and relevance reasons, Google truncates very large result
sets and only provides a rough guess as to how many results are actually in its
index. You can work around that by appending these parameters to the end of
the URL after executing your query, and pressing Enter:
&filter=0&start=990
Depending on how many results there actually are, you may see the last page,
or you may see an error page that says your search did not match any
documents. However, below the error message is the usual colorful
“Gooooogle” logo with result page numbers underneath it. Click on the last
number in the list, and you’ll see the true final page of results, along with a
more accurate result count.
 Location-Based Testing for Local and Mobile Search
As explained in previous chapters, Google is heavily invested in mobile
search, which places a strong emphasis on local results. Mobile is so closely
tied to local that the search phrase “near me” has almost become obsolete in
mobile search queries (including “near me” may show different ads at the
top of the results because of Google Ads keyword bidding, and modifying
other filters like “open now” and the method of travel you’ve selected in
Google Maps can alter the order of results).
If your website’s main purpose is to attract local customers (such as if you
have a storefront, a chain of restaurants, or if you’re operating a handyman
service), you will get a lot of benefit out of testing it from every location in
which you want to be considered “near” someone conducting a mobile
search. If your business doesn’t show up in one of those queries, you’re
practically invisible to searchers. This is especially important for people who
have a physical storefront that sells both locally and online because the
marketing for both of those sales pipelines will have little in common.
Web browsers and search engines automatically detect your location based
on several potential factors, such as IP address, account information (if
you’re logged into your Google account), cookies, and location data from a
mobile device’s GPS and service provider. The subsections below explain
how to manipulate these factors so that you can see what Google’s behavior
will be based on searches performed from a location that you specify.
(Thanks to Hamlet Batista for these tips.)
Simulating a Location with Google Chrome
Google’s Chrome browser has a powerful set of developer tools built into it
that, among many other things, can report specific location data to sites you
visit. To do this, first you need to know the latitude and longitude coordinates
of the place you want to emulate. You can use Google Maps for that; just
search for a town or a place in the immediate area you want to get
coordinates for. When Maps shows that location, it will put the X and Y
coordinates into the URL, following the @ symbol. For instance, this URL
shows that the coordinates of the Florida Mall, at 8001 S Orange Blossom
Trail in Orlando, FL are: 28.445924, -81.3976977:
https://www.google.com/maps/place/The+Florida+Mall/@28.445924,-81.3976977,17z/
 data=!3m1!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x88e77dad19c83825:0xb7d19a07dc154483!8m2!3d28.445924!4d-
81.395509
Once you have the coordinates (it’s easiest to copy and paste them into a text
editor, or to copy and paste the X and Y individually from the Google Maps
URL), you can set that location in Chrome through this process:
1. Start Chrome and go to the Google homepage at www.google.com.
2. Click on the Customize and Control Google Chrome menu (three
vertical dots) in the upper right corner of the Chrome window.
3. In the menu that appears, select More Tools to expand the menu, then
click on Developer Tools. The DevTools dock will appear on the
right side of the screen.
4. Click on the Customize and Control DevTools menu (three vertical
dots) in the upper right corner of the DevTools dock.
5. In the menu that appears, select More Tools to expand the menu, then
click on Sensors. In the Console dock at the bottom right of the
Chrome window, the Sensors dialogue will appear.
6. In the Sensors dock, click the drop-down menu next to Geolocation,
then select Custom Location…
7. Enter the geographic coordinates from the Google Maps URL into the
Latitude and Longitude fields.
8. In the Google homepage search field, type in a query relevant to your
website or business. The results that Google displays will be tailored
to the location you specified.
Simulating a Mobile Device with Google Chrome
Following the instructions from the previous subsection to enable the
DevTools dock, you can select the Toggle Device Toolbar button (next to
the Elements tab) to enable a mobile device view of a website. The mouse
cursor will turn into a large round dot that represents a finger on a
touchscreen. A tap is equivalent to a single left mouseclick; a swipe is
equivalent to a click-and-drag with the left mouse button.
Preventing Country-Specific Redirects
Google automatically detects your location in order to refine your search
results. Sometimes, though, you may want to prevent Google from
redirecting you to a country-specific domain (such as google.co.uk or
google.fr). To avoid that, use this URL:
https://www.google.com/ncr
NCR stands for “no country redirect,” and will give you the standard
google.com search page.
 Finding People to Link to You
To improve your site’s search rankings and incoming search traffic, other
sites have to link to it. It can be very difficult to find people who are willing
to link to your pages, especially if your primary method is cold-emailing. If
you can narrow the list of targets to include only sites that are topic-
appropriate, where a link to your page won’t seem out of place or unusual,
you’ve got an edge. One way to find those sites is by using the site: operator.
Academic and government sites tend to be highly trusted and authoritative in
Google’s PageRank algorithm, so links from .edu and .gov domains could
greatly increase search rankings for our fictional frozen vegetable business
site. Here’s a query that will return some high-value targets:
site:edu | site:gov “frozen vegetables” “website * by” | “email * by”
The last two phrases in the query are an attempt to find pages that list contact
information for the people who maintain the sites—the people you’d email to
ask about links.
 Finding Documents That Are Normally Not Public
If you’re feeling particularly nosy, if you’ve got industrial espionage in mind,
or if you just want to get some ideas on how to craft documents that are
typically confidential, you can make creative use of the filetype: operator.
Try these queries if you’re looking for confidential business plans:
confidential business plan filetype:pdf
confidential business plan -template filetype:doc
“planning process as strictly confidential” filetype:pdf
Forrester Research typically sells its research reports. Once someone has
gotten their hands on one of Forrester’s PDFs, though, it might find its way to
the Web by accident. To find them, include these two somewhat uncommon
words that often appear in Forrester reports: grapevine and endnotes. Add
those to your search query, plus Forrester Research, and use the filetype:
operator to limit the results to PDFs. Try executing this query without a
specific topic, and see what’s out there right now:
forrester research grapevine endnotes filetype:pdf
The inurl: operator can also be useful for finding PDFs. For instance, the
default directory for downloadable content in Wordpress is ‘wp-content.’ If
you limit your search to URLs that include that directory, you may be able to
find some PDFs (and images and other documents) there. This query will
search Wordpress sites for PDFs that contain guidelines and requirements for
conference speakers:
speaker kit filetype:pdf inurl:wp-content

More About PDFs on the Web

As far as search engines are concerned, a PDF hosted on the Web is just
another page with text, images, and links. If you’re trying to keep a PDF
private on the public Web, you’ll have to be careful with outbound links in its
content. Like any other link, they report the source as a referrer, so your PDF
will show up in the logs and analytics of the sites you link to.
If you’re not trying to keep a PDF private, and in fact want it to be visited,
viewed, and downloaded, then there’s one extra step you should take to
maximize its impact: ensure that there are links back to your site. Many PDFs
have links out to other sites, but don’t link back to the site they’re hosted on.
This can create a sort of “content island” for that PDF, separating it from
your website in terms of search ranking and authority, especially if a lot of
other sites link to it. You probably don’t want your PDF to be ranked higher
than your homepage, and you probably also want people who find your PDF
to be able to easily get to your site without having to search again or guess.
If the (public) PDF you’re hosting is duplicating content on your website,
then both documents will be vying for a position in the search results, and
Google will only want to display one in order to maintain diversity in the
results. To avoid this, you can specify that the webpage—not the PDF—
should be the canonical source for this information by adding a <link
rel=“canonical”> element in the <head> section of both the webpage and
the PDF’s HTML header:
<link rel=“canonical” href=“https://www.example.com/research/frozen_vegetable_study.html”
/>
 Reducing the Result Set When Testing For Indexation
For unknown reasons, Google won’t let you go beyond the 775th result in a
normal SERP. The only context I can think of where this could possibly be a
problem is when you’re checking a large site to see how well it is indexed. If
you hit the 775-result limit when using the site: operator on your domain’s
root level, then you’ll have to segment the site at the directory and/or
filename level by using the site: and inurl: operators. For example, this will
return only the results found in the articles directory of this site:
site:www.example.com/articles/
If you have more than 700 pages in that directory, add the inurl: operator to
return a more limited result set:
site:www.example.com/articles/ inurl:january
That should return all the articles with january in the file name. Hopefully
you’ve employed a naming convention that will allow you to follow this
procedure. If not, you may have to get creative with some other operators,
such as - to remove large groups of results; intext: to search for all instances
of a keyword in a page’s content; and filetype: to limit the kind of content
that is returned.
For instance if you want to see if and how a page is indexed for the keyword
marketing, you would use the URL as a search term along with the intext:
operator followed by the keyword:
www.example.com intext:marketing
If the word marketing is indexed on the example.com homepage, the snippet
that Google returns will show it in context.
 Removing a Featured Snippet From the SERP
The top result on a SERP is in the number one position, and traditionally
that’s the target most SEOs aim for. When Google introduced featured
snippets, it created a new number zero position for them in the SERP. That
doesn’t mean that a result that gets a featured snippet is ranked higher than
the number one result. Any of the top ten organic results on a SERP can be
promoted to the featured position. If that happens, though, the regular snippet
is removed from the result set.
Maybe the zero position is where you want to be, and maybe it isn’t. Featured
snippets are intended to answer questions without clickthroughs, so they tend
to have a lower clickthrough rate than the non-featured results below them. If
you’re the number one result and you get promoted to zero, that could cost
you a lot of search traffic.
There are two viable methods of escaping the featured snippet slot: de-
optimizing for the keywords that are responsible for promoting the page to
the featured snippet; or instructing Google to create smaller snippets from
your page content, which will make it undesirable as a featured snippet
candidate.
First, you should figure out exactly where your organic position is among the
top ten. If you’re at position 9 or 10, you probably don’t want to de-optimize
because that could take you entirely off the first result page.
To see your true organic position, you have to remove the featured snippet
from the SERP. That’s easy to do—just reduce the number of results per page
from 10 to 9, either through your Google search preferences, or by appending
this parameter to the end of the SERP URL:
&num=9
To reduce the amount of text that Google can use for a snippet (both normal
and featured), create or modify a robots meta tag in the <head> section of
the page, and add a modest max-snippet value to the content property:
<meta name=“robots” content=”max-snippet:50” />
Google doesn’t have a strict required length for featured snippets, but it does
favor longer blocks of text. If you limit the snippet length to 50 characters (or
whatever length you want to use), that makes it difficult to answer a question
without a clickthrough, and that will make your site a poor candidate for a
featured snippet.
 Monitoring Incoming Links and Measuring Anchor
Text Strength
Incoming link text is extremely important for determining which search terms
your pages are associated with. Google will tell you what pages it associates
with any given link text when you use the allinanchor: and inanchor:
operators. So if you want to see who is linking to pages about frozen
vegetables, you might use this query:
allinanchor: frozen vegetables
That will probably return a lot of results. Some of them may be useful, but
perhaps you’re more interested in seeing how people really feel about your
products:
allinanchor: worst | rotten | gross | disgusting frozen vegetables
Hopefully your page isn’t in that SERP! If it is, you might consider
contacting the blogger or webmaster responsible for that page and asking him
what you can do to solve the problem.
The allinanchor: operator can also be good for checking if the keywords in
your ad campaigns match the most powerful anchor text. If not, you may
need to do some fine-tuning of various aspects of site design, ad campaigns,
and overall marketing once your keyword and anchor text research are
completed.
The MozBar Chrome Plugin
https://moz.com/products/pro/seo-toolbar
This free Chrome extension enables you to see how almost every aspect of
your website interacts with or is affected by search engines. You can view a
variety of statistics on every link on a webpage; highlight certain keywords;
and get an idea of how a page will rank in SERPs, based on the authority of
the page and the site.
 Checking Image Indexing
Depending on the kind of business you’re running, you may or may not want
certain images from your site to be indexed. In most cases, product images
that link back to your site are a good thing because people who search for
those products in Google Images may click your photos and get to your
pages.
You can test for image indexing with the site: operator in Google Images:
site:example.com

This query, when modified for your domain name and executed from the
search box on https://images.google.com, will show all the images that
Google has indexed from your site.
Blocking Image Indexing
On the other hand, you may not want photos from the company holiday party
to be the top result for brand and product searches. To remove those images
from search indexes, you can move them to an intranet, or to part of your site
that requires authentication.
If you want the photos to remain publicly accessible but prevent them from
being indexed, you can explicitly exclude them with X-Robots-Tag HTTP
headers on the pages they’re hosted on. That’s something you should talk to
your Web developer or system administrator about, but for reference, if
you’re using the Apache Web server, you might use the rule shown below to
block all images from being indexed on your site (or in a specific directory, if
you use .htaccess instead of the global Apache configuration file):
<Files ~ “\.(png|jpe?g|gif)$”>
Header set X-Robots-Tag “noindex”
</Files>

Adding or Removing Exif Data

All media files (including images, videos, and audio recordings) contain
hidden metadata fields that can describe or identify the contents. For most
images, the metadata conforms to the Exchangeable image file format
standard (Exif, for short). Most devices will, at very least, capture a
timestamp of when a photo was taken and some technical details about the
camera hardware and image properties, but sometimes a camera or
smartphone will also record GPS coordinates and the name of the person who
is associated with the device. Image editing programs may add their own
metadata as well.
Google includes this metadata when it indexes an image file. If you want
your images to be found, then you should edit their Exif metadata to include
all of the relevant keywords and properties; if you do not want your images to
be indexed, then you should erase all of their Exif data.
You can easily view or alter this metadata through image editing utilities such
as GIMP or Photoshop, or by viewing the file’s properties with your
computer’s file management utility (File Explorer on Windows; Finder on
Mac; or Nautilus, Thunar, or Konqueror on Linux). There are also various
scripts, utilities, and command-line tools that can manipulate image metadata
programmatically and/or in batch.
 What Are People Searching For?
Digital marketing company Mondovo maintains a list of the top 1000 Google
search queries:
https://www.mondovo.com/keywords/most-asked-questions-on-google
On the surface, knowing what people are searching for is useful in a variety
of ways: content marketing, ad placement, trend monitoring. But if you dig a
little deeper into the intentions behind these queries, you can learn a lot about
why people search, and that can teach you how to think like a potential visitor
to your website. For instance, here are potential “whys” behind some of the
most popular search queries as of the publication of this book (not the exact
top 10, since there was some redundancy in the list):
1. What is my IP address? Without a mirror, how would you know
what you look like? Or in more modern terms: how do you figure out
what IP address represents you on the Internet? While this
information is not secret, it also isn’t easy to find; you have to access
the admin console for your modem or router, or run some commands
from the terminal interface. Google is by far the quickest and easiest
way to determine your public IP address.
2. What time is it? This query suggests that people are often unsure of
how changes in time zones and daylight savings time affects them
and the people they want to interact with via phone, text, or email.
3. How to register to vote? Search engines are excellent navigators of
bureaucracy. Most of us are under the hierarchical or overlapping
jurisdictions of many different government entities: city, town,
county, state or province, and the federal government. Within each of
those are many different bureaus, agencies, and departments. Without
Google, how would you try to figure out which one handles voter
registration?
4. How to tie a tie? This suggests several interesting things about
modern fashion, culture, education, and economics. It also shows that
there can be a vast difference between the perceived and actual
difficulty of a task. Easy and simple are not as aligned as they often
appear to be.
5. Can you run it? People often ask if their computer can run a certain
program or game, or if their phone can support a certain app. One
takeaway from this is that meaningful device specifications,
requirements, and dependencies are often poorly communicated to
consumers and customers.
6. What song is this? This query is better suited to one of many mobile
apps that identify and then offer to sell you a license to listen to a
song or album. Why, then, aren’t people using those apps?
Ultimately, though, this represents a brand failure for a band or
musician.
7. How to lose weight? This is a task for which there are many different
approaches, some of them exactly the opposite of others. To conquer
this challenge, one must commit to a perceived optimal strategy, then
execute and measure progress. That’s a high burden of responsibility
for someone who is adopting a new strategy, especially when there
are so many hidden factors to consider.
8. How many ounces in a cup? For as long as the imperial measurement
system exists, there will be people who are confused by its bizarre
divisions and relationships among units of weight, area, volume, and
speed. One might interpret this question as: how many fluid ounces
are in one cup? Or: how many ounces in weight is one cup of
something? One cup of raisins is about 5.6 ounces in weight; one cup
of Greek yogurt is about 8 ounces in weight, and also 8 fluid ounces
in volume.
9. When is mothers day? Also on the list is: when is father’s day?
There are probably several different reasons for these queries: they
require making reservations in advance (for gift deliveries and
restaurant reservations), they require some lead time to find and buy
a gift or card, they’re on different days and it’s hard to remember
which is which, and they’re minor holidays that we’d forget about if
we weren’t reminded.
10. How to hack a Facebook account? This suggests that people want
to know private things that they’re certain are online, but they don’t
have access to. Sometimes those private things have the appearance
of being public, when in fact they are not. When the permission
context changes and private information becomes hidden, the ease
with which it was removed from view can perhaps give people the
impression that making it viewable again is just as easy.
The Future of Google
Google is constantly moving forward, but it’s difficult to see where it’s going
unless you’re actively watching it. While Google is secretive about its minor
algorithm adjustments and updates, employees usually write blog entries or
social media posts when there are major revolutionary changes, and they
occasionally give a talk or make a video that explains what their goals and
plans are for the future. Based on that content and my own experience in
SEO, I have a few predictions about the future of Google.
 A Pivot Toward AI
Most people think of Google as a search engine company that also has some
interesting other services and devices. Throughout this book, I’ve shown you
how every Google product relates to search in some way. Historically, search
has always been at the center of everything Google does, but I think that’s
going to change. In fact, it probably already has.
Google appears to have bet its future on machine learning, also known as
artificial intelligence, more commonly abbreviated as AI. Every major tech
company has a lot of resources invested in AI, but when I consider
everything Google’s said and done over the past few years, it looks like AI is
now the center of its universe. Google used to use AI to make search better;
now it looks like Google is using search to make AI better.
Some people find this frightening, but I don’t. Real AI is nothing like
science-fiction AI; it’s not Skynet from the Terminator movies, or
Commander Data from Star Trek. Artificial intelligence is a broad term that
encompasses many technologies that collect, combine, cleanse, organize,
aggregate, slice, and analyze a large amount of data. Some of these
technologies have been around for a long time. You might have heard of AI
in the form of data mining or predictive analysis, which detects and
forecasts market trends; or business intelligence, which generates reports,
charts, graphs, and dashboards from aggregated business data. Email spam
filters are a form of AI. Beyond that, AI is already being used for server and
network load balancing, dynamic price adjustment for consumer goods and
services, and retail product placement and promotion.
As explained in the “The Technology Behind Search” chapter earlier in this
book, Google has been using AI to understand the meaning of words and
phrases, and how they connect to concepts in the Knowledge Graph.
Previously the Knowledge Graph relied on structured data from human
sources. In the near future, AI will reliably create structured data for the
Knowledge Graph, which will expand it by orders of magnitude. All of the
other predictions in this chapter assume the existence of a super-powered
Knowledge Graph.
 More Answers, Fewer Results
Most Web searches are simple and can be satisfied with straightforward
answers that don’t require thousands of search results. That being the case,
why should Google spend the computing resources and energy to generate
them? Google has already made several big changes to its results page over
the past few years that, in collective, show rapid progress toward a ‘single
answer’ solution, and in the future I think most queries will land on an
‘answer page’ instead of a ‘results page.’ When the answer isn’t clear,
Google will provide calculated refinements for you to drill down into.
Today, Web queries are often satisfied from content included on the SERP.
You no longer need to click through to Wikipedia or other sites to learn
where Jim Morrison was born, or how deep the Pacific Ocean is. In fact, if
you’re signed into your Google account and using a desktop browser, you can
get those answers in the Google Autocomplete list without even generating a
SERP!
In August 2019, the Internet market research company SparkToro published
an analysis of clickstream data from more than 140 million searches on
desktop and mobile devices. It showed that, for the first time ever, slightly
more than half of all Google searches don’t lead to a click on the result page.
The implication is that the searcher’s query was addressed in a OneBox
result, featured snippet, or Knowledge Panel.
Zero-click searches are convenient for users, but bad news for people who
own highly-ranked content sites that rely on search traffic. But Google isn’t
doing this to help searchers save time, or to hurt Web publishers. Like all
other Google innovations, it’s primarily in support of ad revenue;
SparkToro’s analysis showed that among the searches that do end in clicks,
an increasing percentage are on sponsored ads on the result page.
 Journeys
Google’s original purpose was to provide a list of trusted webpages that were
highly relevant to the keywords in your search query. Over time, it has
evolved into a service that provides answers—the objectively most reliable
and useful results. An answer is the response to a question, and is framed by
the limited context of a static time and place. Answers can change over time,
and can vary depending on where you are, who you are, and what you’re
doing.
In celebration of its 20th anniversary in September 2018, Google announced
that it was broadening its focus to encompass the larger context of journeys.
A journey represents a series of topically-related questions and answers over
a period of time. With enough data about a search journey, Google can divine
the likely reasons for asking those questions, which in turn enables it to
anticipate related questions and answers.
For instance, let’s consider our earlier query for wedding photographer in
Chicago, which returns many results with the most trusted (the answers) at
the top. If you next search for Chicago caterer, Google will use its topic layer
to draw a connection between these searches, then begin to assume that you
are planning a wedding in Chicago (a search journey consisting of many
related queries). It will anticipate questions and answers related to this topic,
and wherever Google Ads are shown across the Internet, you’ll start to see
them skew toward goods and services related to weddings and the Chicago
area. If you abandon that search journey for a while and come back to it days
or weeks later, Google will try to pick up where you left off.
As the Knowledge Graph expands, Google search results will more quickly
and accurately skew toward your search journey, and perhaps eventually
attempt to guide it in certain directions.
 Less Searching
Google’s mission is ‘to organize the world’s information and make it
universally accessible and useful.’ Notice the word ‘search’ isn’t in that
sentence? That’s because Google is working to make search unnecessary—or
at least to relegate search to the kind of serious, refined queries that you’ve
learned about in this book. The bulk of total Web search volume isn’t
comprised of that level of research, though; as explained in the “What Are
People Searching For” section earlier in this book, mostly it’s simple stuff
like what time is it and when is mother’s day. The Web search engine has
always been our generic all-purpose interface to the Internet, and I think
Google is trying to change that.
Ideally we’d never have to search for anything; whatever we need would be
at hand exactly when we need it. That may seem like a fantasy, but every
major update to Google’s search services over the past few years has been in
pursuit of this goal, and I think it’s close to being able to achieve it.
If you’ve always had good search technique and don’t use mobile search very
often, then most of Google’s recent algorithm changes have been subtle or
invisible to you. You’re still forming and refining your query, hopefully
finding good results, and clicking through to sites that have some or all of the
information you’re looking for. You’re translating your internal question into
a search-engine-friendly query, then building a consensus answer based on
your evaluation of the sources on the result page. This is very much like the
pre-Web process of going to the public library and asking a librarian to help
you find the right books for your project or paper. The librarian is essentially
an improved interface to the card catalogue; her knowledge applies a
subjective layer of metadata that isn’t in the database. If you wanted to get
into gardening, for instance, a good librarian would take into account your
locale, the season, the space you have to work with, and the kinds of plants
you’re interested in, then direct you to the most relevant and trustworthy
books for that context.
In the past, we enabled searchability by organizing and cataloguing
information so that it could be found through standard search practices.
That’s why library books are classified, labeled, and shelved according to a
very specific information architecture. This has never been an efficient
system, though. One obvious problem with it is that unlabeled books cannot
not be found. A less obvious problem is that we aren’t allowed to
communicate the complexity of our search intent, so we can only get a broad
set of results specific to a particular topic. That problem is compounded by
the overlapping of topics in the index; you may not even be able to find all of
the relevant categories on your own.
In the pre-Google days, if you didn’t have access to a library, or if the library
didn’t have enough books on the topic you were interested in, then the next
step was to use your social connections to try to get in touch with an expert.
You’d start by asking someone older and wiser, or asking your friends and
family if they knew anyone who had expertise in the subject you wanted to
learn about. Hopefully you’d be able to connect with an expert who might
take the time to give you in-depth advice.
The best search results include comprehensive, professionally-researched and
edited information resources; and personal expertise and guidance from
people with local experience. That represents the current state of Google
search. In the future, I think Google will be able to deliver that kind of
curated and detailed result set in one query instead of many, and in some
instances you won’t need to query at all—Google will have enough data
about you to know what you’re looking for before you ask.
 A Pixel Smartwatch
Of all the predictions in this chapter, this is the one that is most likely to
come true first.
Back in 2012, the Pebble smartwatch set a record as the most highly-funded
Kickstarter campaign. Four years later, the company was purchased by Fitbit.
Three years after that, Google bought Fitbit, which was the fifth largest
wearable device manufacturer at the time. Almost concurrent with that
announcement, Google also purchased the smartwatch technology portfolio
and part of the engineering department from Fossil, which has produced
several generations of WearOS-based smartwatches, and dabbled in wrist-
wearable tech since 2003. Oh—and Fossil bought a wearable technology
company named Misfit back in 2015.
So, to summarize: Google bought all of the technology from four top
wearable tech companies, yet as of this writing it has not brought a
smartwatch to market. Before the next edition of this book is printed, I think
we’ll see the first Pixel Smartwatch. It’ll have a new version of WearOS with
native Google Assistant integration. It will connect to a Pixel smartphone and
Pixel Buds perfectly, and seamlessly handoff connectivity from your car to
your computer to your phone and your Nest devices. You’ll be able to search
the Web from your Pixel Smartwatch by speaking your query in ordinary
natural language, and it will attempt to provide you with a OneBox answer.
 Better Service for Emerging Markets
For most of the history of the World Wide Web, the majority of websites
have been hosted in the US or Europe, and featured content written in
English. And like most companies, Google has historically been heavily
influenced by the needs of its current users. This intrinsic bias toward the
English-speaking ‘Western world’ makes it difficult to expand the company’s
userbase into countries and cultures that are substantially different.
Google has supported multiple languages and locale-based indexes for a long
time, but overall it’s always been English-centric. Consequently other search
engines have found greater adoption in places like Russia (where the most
popular search engine is Yandex) and China (where Baidu has 74% of the
Web search market).
The Next Billion Users is the name of an initiative at Google to expand its
services into areas of the world where people are behind the technology
curve, or what some marketers refer to as ‘emerging markets.’ Information
contained in such places is often invisible to search engines for a variety of
reasons: the predominant languages there are poorly understood by AI, lack
of digitization of offline content, reliance on outdated technologies, no access
to a reliable Internet connection, and government filtering or censorship.
Google maintains a blog specific to this topic at:
https://blog.google/technology/next-billion-users
Google benefits directly from this by expanding its advertising reach. A less
obvious benefit is the improvement of its natural language processing AI, and
the expansion of the Knowledge Graph. From a user standpoint, we’ll have
access to cultural and historical information that has never had global
visibility; and if you’re selling something online, you’ll gain easier access to
markets in southeast and central Asia and South America.
 More Speaking, Less Typing
Google already has excellent speech-to-text conversion capabilities for
English and a few other common languages. It’s already in use in its Nest line
of ‘smart home’ devices, and in modern Android devices. This isn’t just a
hands-free feature for search queries or note-taking; it’s also as a way of
controlling your mobile or ‘smart home’ devices through Google Assistant.
It’s a safe bet that this will expand in the future. You’ll be speaking queries to
your smartwatch and getting a OneBox answer in reply, and with the
expansion of Google Assistant, you’ll be able to order groceries, set up
doctor’s appointments, and engage in highly-personalized advanced
education courses.
If you want to, you’ll be able to do more more speaking than typing to
interface with your computer and mobile devices.
 Google Wins the Connected Device War
There aren’t many players in the connected device space. While there are
some smaller smartwatch, smartphone, stylus, and earbud manufacturers,
they all rely on Google for Android support, or they act as generic Bluetooth
devices that can connect to the Apple or Amazon mobile platforms on a basic
level, though they are rarely ‘officially supported.’ Among the big players in
the mobile device realm, only Amazon attempts to compete with Google’s
enormous connected device ecosystem.
Amazon has battled Google a few times in the past, most notably with the
Amazon Appstore For Android, but the only serious contest between the two
has been in the ‘smart home’ device space. Amazon has a line of Alexa
voice-activated products, and Google has the much more substantial Nest
product line.
There’s already a huge feature gap between Nest and Alexa, and I don’t think
Amazon can close it. Amazon has a lot of resources in terms of cloud
computing and product and customer data, but it doesn’t have the Knowledge
Graph, and it doesn’t have Google’s natural language processing technology.
Nest will eventually dominate the ‘smart home’ market. I don’t see any path
forward for Alexa outside of its niche as a media player for Amazon-
purchased content, and as a voice interface for buying things on
Amazon.com.
Appendix A: Advanced Query String
Parameters
The search operators that were defined earlier in this book should suffice for
most advanced searches. However, if you need to be as specific as possible
with results filtering, or if you need to build a URL dynamically, here’s the
hidden stash. All parameters are set using the = operator and assume a base
URL of:
https://www.google.com/search?
Each parameter after the query must be separated with the & symbol.
Parameters are separated from sub-parameters with a colon, for instance:
https://www.google.com/search?q=”desktop+linux+distros”&tbs:li=1
Table 1: Google query parameters
Query Description
parameter
q The search query. Words are separated by a + symbol.
Required.

as_eq Excludes this term, same effect as the - operator.

as_filetype Same as the filetype: operator, but allows exclusion as well
as inclusion, via the as_ft parameter.
as_ft Modifies the purpose of the as_filetype parameter:
i includes only results matching the specified filetype
 (default)
e excludes results matching the specified filetype
as_qdr Restricts results to those indexed within the specified
interval:
d past 24 hours
w past week
m past month
y past year
mn where n is the number of months. For example, m8
would be 8 months
sitesearch Has the same effect as the site: operator.
as_sitesearch Like sitesearch, but allows exclusion as well as inclusion, via
the as_dt parameter.
as_dt Modifies the purpose of the as_sitesearch parameter:
i returns only results from the specified URL (default)
e returns results from all URLs except the one specified
as_rq Returns sites related to the specified URL, same effect as the
related: operator.
filter Sets the grouping of similar results:
0 to turn off grouping
1 to turn on grouping (default)
gs_ivs=1 Speaks the top search result via text-to-speech, but only for
results of voice searches (using the microphone icon in the
search bar).
hl Specifies the language used in the Google interface. Value
must be an ISO 639-1 (two-letter) language code.
lr Restricts results to pages that contain content in a certain
language. Value must be an ISO 639-1 (two-letter) language
code.
near Specifies a city where search results should be localized.
Value must be a city name.
newwindow Determines whether results will open in a new window when
clicked. Values are:
 0 to open in the same window (default)
1 to open in a new window
num Sets the maximum number of results that Google will return
safe Toggles Google’s SafeSearch filter. Values are:
active to turn it on (default)
off to turn it off
tbs Contains options found in the Search Tools menu on the
results page. These are the sub-parameters for Web search:
qdr basic time interval (refer to as_qdr above for
possible values)
cdr specific time interval with sub-parameters for
specific MM/DD/YYYY start (cd_min) and end
(cd_max) dates.
li sort order. Values are 0 to sort by relevance (default)
and 1 to sort by the verbatim search query.
tbm Sets a specialized content type search, identical to searching
from Google’s specialized search tools. Values are:
app applications
bks books
isch images
nws news and blogs
pts patents
vid video
Appendix B: Glossary
Anchor text: the clickable text of a hyperlink. Also called link text. This is
usually strongly associated with the page that it links to.
BERT: (Bi-directional Encoder Representations from Transformers). This is
an open source neural network-based method of training a search engine to
recognize when a query is in the form of a natural language question, to
interpret the intent it communicates, and to answer it with a list of results.
Boolean operator: a reserved word or symbol that explicitly includes or
excludes a word or phrase: AND, NOT, and OR.
Cache date: the last time that Google indexed a page.
Cloud: a remotely hosted resource that is allocated from a large computing
infrastructure, and rented out on a pay-per-use basis. Cloud services usually
encompass storage, processing, and network bandwidth.
Co-occurrence analysis: a method of documenting relationships between
keywords in order to establish a larger sense of context and meaning in
search queries.
Crawler: an automated process (called a bot or robot) that builds an
information index by exploring known sites and following links. Also
referred to as a spider. Google’s crawler is called Googlebot.
Document vocabulary: an engineering term for the content on a webpage. A
search engine translates user vocabulary (a traditional search query
composed of keywords, phrases, and operators) so that it can be matched to
document vocabulary.
Domain: the ‘friendly name’ that identifies a website. Usually situated
between a subdomain (such as ‘www’) and a TLD (such as ‘.com’).
Easter eggs: fun, unnecessary hidden surprises in a program, site, or service.
Entity: a data object that describes a person, place, thing, or concept.
Entity attribute: a property of an entity. For example: ‘Barack Obama’ is the
value of the ‘husband’ attribute of the ‘Michelle Obama’ entity.
Featured snippet: a search result that puts a larger-than-usual excerpt of a
page’s content above the link to the page. Featured snippets usually attempt
to provide an answer to a question.
Index: a metadata structure that describes the order, location, and
hierarchical relationships of all facts or entities in a data domain. In search
technology, an index is a record of known websites, files, and media;
descriptions of them; their measure of authority, trustworthiness, and
popularity; and how they connect to each other.
Interface: a method of interacting with a system. In information technology,
interfaces can be between two digital entities (such as a computer and a
printer, or a Web service and a network resource), or between a human and a
computer (such as a keyboard, or the Google search homepage).
Keywords: search terms; the words in a query that communicate intent. (See
also: stop words).
Link: short for hyperlink. A standard HTML element that associates a local
or remote digital resource with a character, word, phrase, or image.
Map pack: the three top-rated Google My Business listings that appear
below the map graphic for local Web search results.
Mashup: a website that provides a unique integration and/or presentation of
content from other websites or services.
Metadata: “Data about data.” In search technology, metadata describes an
object in the search index.
Metasearch: “Search of searches.” A mashup of search engines. Executes a
single query on multiple search platforms, and returns results in a
consolidated format.
Natural language search: a search query that is structured in a
conversational, human-friendly way.
Passage indexing: Google’s ability to identify, isolate, and index small
excerpts (or passages) of text content in addition to traditional whole-page
indexing.
Plugin: an optional external component that adds to, alters, or restricts the
functionality of an extensible software system.
Query: a request for information. In search technology, a query is the string
of words, characters, and operators that a user passes to a search engine to
communicate his or her intent to acquire information.
Query string parameter: a single, specific search command passed to
Google via a string appended to the base URL. In information technology,
URL parameters provide data and instructions to a Web service, which then
constructs a new webpage based on that information. Typically a URL is
programmatically constructed via user interface controls (text fields and
buttons) or scripts, but occasionally it is useful to manually add a parameter
that doesn’t have an equivalent interface element.
Ranking algorithm: a focused methodology for determining the authority,
relevance, and trustworthiness of an indexed resource in a given search
context. Google employs many different ranking algorithms to account for
different search methods, information types, and contextual indicators.
Search history: a record of search queries.
Search operator: a reserved word or character used in search queries to give
special refinement instructions to a search engine.
SERP: acronym for Search Engine Result Page. This is the webpage that a
search engine creates to display the results returned from a query.
Snippet: a small bit of text, data, or source code. In search technology, a
snippet is the text that a search engine generates to describe the content of a
webpage, constructed from that page’s metadata, title, and content. (See also:
featured snippet).
Spider: (refer to the Crawler entry).
Stemming: the inclusion of search results that pertain to other possible
permutations of the root word of a search term.
Stop words: short words and letters such as the and to that are not usually
considered keywords, and are traditionally ignored by search engines. Does
not apply to natural language queries.
URL: acronym for Uniform Resource Locator. Also referred to as URI (an
acronym for Uniform Resource Identifier). The local or remote network
path to a digital resource such as a webpage, file, or media. A URL can be
absolute (the complete path to the resource) or relative (the path to a
resource, relative to the current location).
User intent: the presumed motivation behind an interface action. In search
technology, Google attempts to interpret user intent by combining a search
query with contextual indicators such as location, device, and search history;
and personal information related to the user’s known context such as traffic,
holidays, events, and calendar appointments.
User vocabulary: an engineering term for a traditional search query
composed of keywords, phrases, and operators. A search engine interprets
user vocabulary so that it can be matched to document vocabulary, which
refers to the content on a webpage.