Google Hacks

Setting Preferences

Customize the way you search Google.

Google’s preferences provide a nice, easy way to set your searching preferences from this moment forward.

Language

You can set your Interface Language, affecting the language in which tips and messages are displayed. Language choices range from Afrikaans to Welsh, with plenty of odd options including Bork Bork Bork! (the Swedish Chef), Elmer Fudd, and Pig Latin thrown in for fun. Not to be confused with Interface Language, Search Language restricts what languages should be considered when searching Google’s page index. The default being any language, you could be interested only in web pages written in Chinese and Japanese, or French, German, and Spanish—the combination is up to you. Figure 1-1 shows the page through which you can set your language preferences.

Figure 1-1. Language Tools page

Filtering

Google’s SafeSearch filtering affords you a method of avoiding search results that may offend your sensibilities. The default is no filtering. Moderate filtering rules out explicit images, but not explicit language. Strict filtering filters both on text and images.

Number of Results

Google, by default, displays 10 results per page. For more results, click any of the “Result Page: 1 2 3...” links at the bottom of each result page, or simply click the “Next” link.

You can specify your preferred number of results per page (10, 20, ...