Google Hacks

The Quick Search Toolbar

Why do you have to even launch your browser to search Google? This tool lets you search Google and over 100 other search engines from your Windows status bar.

Why should you have to launch a browser to get access to Google’s over 2 billion pages’ worth of information? You don’t. If you want to go about as far beyond the browser as you can go without actually leaving the computer, check out Dave’s Quick Search Deskbar (http://notesbydave.com/toolbar/doc.htm), shown in Figure 1-18.

This is a quick little download, all of 322K. You’ll need to have Windows 95 or better and IE 5.5 or later to use it. Once you’ve downloaded and installed it, right-click your mouse on the Windows taskbar at the bottom of your screen and choose Toolbars → Add Quick Search.

Figure 1-18. Dave’s Quick Search Deskbar

Basic Browser Use

The Quick Search tool is a veritable Swiss Army knife of functions, but we’ll start with the basics; enter a query in the box and hit the enter key on your keyboard. Your default browser will pop up the Google result page.

The complicated stuff isn’t that much more complicated. To go directly to the first hit of a result (using Google’s I’m Feeling Lucky feature) add an exclamation point to your search:

"washington post"!

Make sure the exclamation point is on the outside of a phrase (i.e., isn’t contained within the quotes) or it won’t work. You can, of course, ...