The Unknown Google

Part Two in the book is called "The Unknown Google" which gives tips on how to use Google's Image Search, Google News, Froogle (shopping with Google), Google Groups and the Google Directory, which is based on the Open Directory project. Part Three shows how to use tools, such as the Google toolbar and third-party tools, that make it easier to use Google.

The final section of the book is for webmasters, giving help on what you can do to make your site Google-friendly. There are some things they don't cover here. As the authors state at the beginning of the chapter

Here's what you won't find in this chapter: tips on gaming the Google engine, interfering with the proper functioning of its index, or otherwise playing the Google ranking game unfairly. While Google tries its darnedest to keep up with such attempts — and does a pretty good job of it — people have found some dirty tricks that pay off in the short run. If you came to this chapter looking for that sort of edge, you'd best look elsewhere.

What they do tell you in this chapter are some of the fundamental steps you need to get your web site noticed in Google. Most experienced web designers will know these things. However, the barriers to entry in web design are low, and more and more people are finding themselves webmasters of some sort. The information will definitely help those people. This section ends with a discussion of Google's AdSense program, where website's can run ads supplied by Google, targeted to your site from the information in the Google database. (It doesn't always work that way. I use Google AdSense on my blog about computer bugs, and every once in awhile I notice that one of my advertisers is Terminix.)

If you are just a casual user of Google, doing a random search here or there, you can probably do without this book. However, anyone who finds themselves doing lots of searches — such as students, teachers, writers, librarians, analysts — will certainly find ways of finding information faster, and doing more efficient searches, by reading this book.