How to search for Blogs, Images, Books and Newsgroup in Google

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Google Search for Blogs

The company Netcraft reported in March 2008, that there are more than 162 million websites in the world (in 1997 there were barely a million). The major change experienced the decade, of course, is the exponential growth of blogs. The original Web sites contained only text. Over the technological developments, images and videos appeared. However, the creation of such sites was rather reserved for companies and individuals warned.

The arrival of blogs has completely changed the situation. Today, everyone is capable of managing a blog. Behind this term is hiding no more than a personal diary presented in a chronological form, notes the most recent being visible first. A blog has two major advantages:

1. It requires no technical knowledge. The user wishing to create a blog must simply register, mostly for free, from a supplier that offers the service. Adding photos and videos is generally simple and options intuitive layout.
2. A blog is an interactive media. If the owner allows it, readers can leave comments, which allows fast exchanges of views interesting and varied.

The frequency of updating a blog depends on the willingness of the author and especially the reputation he acquired on the Web (blogs the most famous being updated daily). As with conventional Web sites, it is really all about blogs: good and less good... So do not hesitate to use Google to find interesting blogs.

To do this, click more in the homepage search engine. Then select the Blogs in the menu. A new window is opened. In the text box, enter one or more keywords. To narrow the search to sites, activate the button labeled "Blog". Start your query by clicking the "Search" button.

The service "Blog Search" to find either individual posts and entire blogs. They are always displayed first, right wording "Blogs:". You see below the main results of research, i.e. articles published in blogs.

Under the title of each result is visible the publication date or the number of hours that have elapsed since the start line. By default, sorting is done according to the degree of relevance. For a descending chronological sorting, click "Sort by date". It is also possible to restrict the display based on hours of broadcast messages. For example, to view the items distributed during the last sixty minutes, click "Last Time" located under "Published" on the left side of the interface.

When analyzing the results, you certainly see that the concept of blog is relatively large for Google. You find such links to newsgroups or Web sites classical. This is because Google is not confined to his house offers Blogger or that of its competitors (TypePad, Dotclear, MySpace, etc.). Sites containing a feed (RSS or Atom) are also taken into account during research.

Advantage of this system, the results provided by the "Google Blog Search" are updated more quickly than those obtained by the usual method of Web search. Indeed, RSS being regularly interrogated, the information changed or added quickly detected.

The service "Blog Search" takes into account only the articles published after the initial indexing of each blog. Therefore, the messages before it is not indexed by Google. Tickets oldest dating back to June 2005.

If you want to automatically update your query Google, take a look under the heading "<ital> Subscription: <ital>" visible on the left edge of the window. A click on the link "<ital> RSS <ital>" or "<ital> Atom <ital> (all depends on the syndication format content that you want to use) opens a new window. Then click on the link "<ital> Subscribe to this feed <ital>" to receive query results as a RSS or Atom. The program, used by the default system for flow management, depends on your software configuration. This can be eg Internet Explorer or Outlook.

If the results offered by Google do not seem relevant, it is possible to refine the search. To do this, click "Blogs <ital> - Advanced Search <ital>" in the service's home page. A new window appears:

For example, you can find a blog from its title or its author. It is also possible to search for a message published in a given time (tickets available during the last hours or between two dates) and / or written in one language.

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Google Search for Images

The original web pages contained only text information. Today, a website consists of course texts, but also images or animated sequences (Flash animations, videos, etc.). However, it is often appropriate to seek an image rather than a full page. This is the case when students want to illustrate a presentation with images downloaded from the Net, or when someone wants to find the photograph or portrait of a famous person.

To simplify such searches, Google designers have adapted their engines so that it can offer only as illustrations of results. On the Google home page, click the "Images" link located on the upper edge. The Google logo change immediately look and content of the page changes slightly. In the single input field, type the keywords you want to associate with the image search. After validation by clicking on the button "Image Search", illustrations, photographs, drawings are displayed in rows of four.

If the image size to recover is an important criterion in your eyes (for example by printing on paper of relatively good quality), it is possible to customize the display for the dimensions of the illustrations. To do this, click on the drop down "Show Pictures" in the search results page and select one of four settings (Small, Medium, Large images or very large).

Google identifies 1 billion images, a number quite phenomenal! Therefore, if you can not find the coveted image via a simple keyword search, do not hesitate to use the advanced search. To this effect, click the hyperlink "Images - Advanced Search" on the right button "Image Search". A new page appears at the top you type the keywords you want to include or exclude from research in the lower you set a number of criteria. Thus it is for example possible to find images related to news, activating the button labeled "news" in the "Types of content." The latter criterion "SafeSearch" allows the introduction of filtering results. The sites with pornographic or sexual will be totally or partially excluded from the search. However, it should be noted that the filtering system is far from infallible.

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Google Search for Books

In late 2004, Google announced the creation of a World Digital Library. This ambitious project, called the original Google Print and Google Books (Google Books), is to digitize 15 million books in a decade and made available to the general public via the Internet. In comparison, the National Library of France has, at present, scanned about 100000 works in its catalog.

To carry out this task Pharaonic, Google has signed partnerships with major libraries, universities such as Michigan, Harvard and Oxford. Similarly, books in the public domain are scanned by Google. Regarding the works protected by copyright, only excerpts are proposed.

To access the tool "Google Book Search", click on the home page of the search engine on the "plus" then "Books". You can also enter the address http://books.google.com in your browser. Then type keywords into the field provided, then click on "Search Books."

Tip: You can refine the search by clicking on "Advanced Search Books."

When a book is not available in its entire, the "Viewing the entire book" is replaced by "No preview available", "Overview limited" or "Viewing extracts (depending agreements between Google and publishers/ libraries worldwide).

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Google Search for Newsgroups

The newsgroups - discussion groups - existed long before the Internet. They were originally hosted on servers using the UUCP Protocol (NNTP <gras> then). This system network of discussion forums is known as <gras> Usenet.

The newsgroups are as follows: any user can subscribe to a newsgroup to see what other subscribers and possibly write it. A message (or article) resembles an e-mail, but unlike the latter which is seen as its only recipients, the article remains stored on a public server for a certain period of time (a few days to several months). Thus, any user connected to a Usenet server can retrieve messages via a software called newsreader.

Since the creation of Usenet, hundreds of millions of articles have been posted. However, storage has actually started in 1995 with the Deja.com. In 2001, it became in the meantime DejaNews.com was bought by Google, which completed the database by a series of articles dating back to 1981. However, it was not possible to save all of the messages exchanged.

To search for newsgroups, in the Google home page click successively on the links "plus" and "Groups".

The page that appears is relatively "responsible". This is because Google Groups is not just a search engine dedicated to discussion forums. This is a real service - free - Creation of groups, with management functions do not exist for Usenet newsgroups. For example, they are not moderate for the most part, while all the creators of Google Groups have the ability to easily restrict access to their groups and to exclude any member does not respect the rules they might have set.

To find a group (either Google or Usenet) and/or messages posted in a forum, simply enter one or more keywords in the box on the top of the page and validate the request clicking the "Search Groups". The results page is broken down as follows:

• Groups matching [keywords] here are listed groups whose name or description contains the keywords. The hyperlink plus instant access to the directory of groups in connection with the request.
• Are then listed the talks which appear in keywords. The name of the group which were posted messages is clear right from the title of the discussion. The date of the first message of the discussion, the total number of articles and authors are listed in green characters.

Tip: The titles of Usenet groups are different from those forums Google. To check from a group, just examine his name. Name Usenet newsgroup always consists of words or characters suites separated by one point.

There is a second method for finding a discussion forum. In the entry field of "Discover", type one or more keywords and confirm by clicking on the button "Find a group." The directory of groups appear immediately and found all the forums (Usenet and Google) are listed under categories. They allow for quicker access to specific information. The items "Subject" and "Members' concern that Google Groups, the categories" Language "," Region "and" activity "apply to Usenet forums and Google.

Finally, the link "Browse all Usenet groups" displays a page with the full hierarchy Usenet.

Tip: You can browse the directory of groups you guided by chance. On the home page of Google Groups, do any keyword and click on the link "Browse Groups category" visible on the lower edge of the window.

Once you've found an interesting group (whatever the mode of research employee), click on its name to display the home page and participate in discussions.