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Some Observations On The Latest Google Search Facility
Author: Frank R Harris
For some time now I have considered that Google has become too
popular to be truly useful, in certain situations, that is to
say. For example, let's say you want to find information about a
specific product such as a car, a computer program, or a
fridge-freezer. You go to the Google search box, and type in the
name of the item you're interested in, and Google presents page
upon page of results relating to that item. You probably are
given million of possible links.
As you've probably found yourself, the problem is that most of
these links take you to websites that want to sell you that car
or program or fridge-freezer. You can waste a lot of time
trawling through Google's results to find a website that
actually provides any useful information about the product.
The reason for this is that smart Marketeers ensure their
commercial websites, through clever S.E.O techniques, are listed
on the first few pages of the search results. A high position in
Google's results is likely to get more hits, more hits means
more sells. So it's worth spending some time and money to
achieve it. Conversely, the sites providing just information,
which are often the sites you're looking for, don't commit the
same resources into getting a high position in Google's results.
Well, it's been a long time coming, but Google has just unveiled
a handy new feature that should make it easier to find the
information you want, bypassing the links to all the sites that
just want to pitch to you, and this is how it works. After
searching for something, look just above and to the left of the
search results and you'll see a link that says "Show Options".
Click that link and a narrow panel will appear to the left of
the results.
This panel contains all sorts of useful options, but the one I'm
really keen on (for the reason above) is the "Reviews" link.
Click that and Google will adjust its results to show only those
that provide reviews of the product you were searching for.
Straight away, the vast majority of the purely commercial sites
will disappear!
The "Forums" link is another useful one. If you click this, the
results will contain only links to web pages where the topic you
searched for has been discussed by ordinary people. If you're
looking for the solution to a problem, or the answer to a
question, these forums are often the quickest way to find it.
Although, I would advise you to keep an open mind when reading
the various comments, there can be a lot of negativity on these
forums.
A little lower down, you can also choose how recently the web
pages should have been published. To give you an example, I've
occasionally searched for "Windows 7 release date" to see if any
information had leaked out about when Windows 7 would arrive.
Again, it always involved trawling through numerous results,
because most led me to web pages published many months ago
containing wild guesses at a release date. Now I can simply
click "Past 24 hours" or "Past week" so that the results contain
only recent web pages.
Lastly, you may see two more handy options further down. If you
click the "More text" link, Google will quote a larger chunk of
the text from each web page in its results, helping you decide
more easily whether the page is worth visiting. If you click
"Images from the page" you'll see a selection of the pictures
from each web page beside its listing.
So, that s it folks, I think you ll find this new facility a
veritable boon!!
Incidentally, if you happen to be searching for information on
setting up your own website, may I recommend you check out
www.smartwebsitebuilder4u.com It comes complete with fully
integrated email list builder
About the author:
Frank is a Chartered Structural Engineer by profession, and runs
his own Design Consultancy business. He has written a number of
articles on Business, Business Opportunities and also Health &
Weight Loss issues. He also trades the Forex markets
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