The Hindu Business Line : Explore Google

Much of what you do in a day depends on Google. “But there’s so much more that people can do with Google. Most users haven’t explored the entire spectrum of search areas within Google,” says Alok Goel, Product Manager, Google India.

What are the various spaces that Google searches?

The Web search is the most common mode to search. We integrate content across Web pages, news, blogs, books, maps, local business information and books. India is unique where mobile phone penetration outweighs PC penetration by 6 to 1. That’s why, apart from search over Web, for Indian users, we have mobile Internet (WAP) search, SMS search (9-77-33-00000) and Voice search (1-800-41-999-999).

Mobile Internet is significantly growing in India and users get the complete Web search experience on their mobile phones over WAP (Wireless Application Protocol).

Through Google SMS Search, users can access information by messaging their query to 9-77-33-00000, at the cost of a regular SMS, and get instant answers.

Users will be able to access local business information as well as updates on topics of interest such as cricket, horoscope, stocks and news. Launched nationally, this service is available across all operators on both GSM and CDMA mobile phones.

Voice search is in pilot stage in Hyderabad and Delhi. Users from these two cities can call a toll free number 1-800-41-999-999 and get answers to local business search and movie show times.

What are the special ways to save time and get my answers fast on Google?

All of us search and get information on Google, but there are a few tips that can help you truly appreciate the power of Google search.

Typing ‘Cricket Score’ will directly show real time cricket scores on Google

Just the flight number (e.g. ‘IT 302’) will directly show how long your flight is delayed.

‘Shop name near locality, city’ will directly give address or phone numbers of the shop.

‘Company name stock’ will directly show price of shares (stock quote) of the company.

‘Movies <your city name>’ will tell you show times for movies in all theatres in your area.

‘Time in country/city’ will tell you current time in that country or city

Typing ‘USD to INR’ will tell you current conversion rate between US dollar and Indian Rupee. It works for other currencies too.

Type ‘site:abc.com’ along with the search to perform search only within ‘abc.com’. So if you are looking for some tax related information you can say ‘capital gains tax site:nic.in’. This will return only government documents.

Did you know typing ‘weather Delhi’ will immediately give you today’s weather along with the next four days of prediction?

Google can search from Indian Web sites only. Click the ‘pages from India’ radio button before clicking the search button.

Typing “link:indianrail.gov.in” will throw up all the pages on the Internet that link to this Web site.

Please explain the cached feature.

Google automatically takes a ‘snapshot’ of each page it crawls and archives it. This ‘cached’ version allows a Web page to be retrieved for users if the original page is ever unavailable (due to temporary failure of the page’s Web server). The cached page appears to users exactly as it looked when Google last crawled it and we display a message at the top of the page to indicate that it’s a cached version. This feature is particularly useful when you want to view content but the Web site is down or the Web site owner has changed the content of page or recently removed the page.

What does Google do to indicate safe sites?

We have elaborate filters to handle safety needs. If a Web site has been detected to contain virus or malware then we show an explicit warning to users explaining the problem. We also disable the links to that Web site within search results so that users don’t inadvertently click on Web sites.

For explicit sexual content we have SafeSearch that screens sites for such content and prevents them from showing up in your search results. No filter is 100 per cent accurate, but SafeSearch eliminates most of inappropriate material. Google enables flexibility to set your search preferences in three ways:

Moderate filtering excludes most explicit images from Google Image Search results but doesn’t filter ordinary Web search results. This is the default SafeSearch setting; you will receive moderate filtering unless you change it.

Strict filtering applies SafeSearch filtering to all your search results (i.e. both image search and ordinary Web search).

No filtering turns off SafeSearch filtering completely.

Users can also adjust the SafeSearch settings on the Advanced Search or the Advanced Image Search pages on a per search basis.

paromita@thehindu.co.in