Google Hacks 2Nd Edition [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Hack 69. Find Out What Google Thinks ___ Is

What does Google think of you, your friends,
your neighborhood, or your favorite movie?

If you've ever wondered what people
think of your home town, your favorite band, your favorite snack
food, or even you, Googlism

(http://www.googlism.com) may provide you with
something useful.

5.12.1. The Interface

The interface is dirt simple. Enter your query and check the
appropriate radio button to specify whether you're
looking for a

who , a

what ,
a

where , or a

when . Figure 5-32 shows a representative results page for Clive
Sinclair, inventor of the

Sinclair ZX-80
personal computer (http://www.nvg.ntnu.no/sinclair/computers/zx80/zx80).
You can also use the tabs to see what other objects people are
searching for and what searches are the most popular. A word of
warning: some of these are not safe for work.

Figure 5-32. Googlism results for Clive Sinclair

5.12.2. What You Get Back

Googlism will respond with a list of things Google believes about the
query at hand, be it a person, place, thing, or moment in time. For
example, a search for Perl and
"What" returns, along with a
laundry list of others:

Perl is a fairly straightforward
Perl is aesthetically pleasing
Perl is just plain fun

These are among the more humorous results for Steve
Jobs and "Who":

steve jobs is my new idol
steve jobs is at it again
steve jobs is apple's focus group

To figure out what page any particular statement comes from, simply
copy and paste it into a plain old Google search. That last
statement, for instance, came from an article titled
"Innovation: How Apple does it" at
http://www.gulker.com/ra/appleinnovationl.

5.12.3. Practical Uses

For the most part, this is a party hacka good party hack.
It's a fun way to
aggregate related statements into a
silly (and occasionally profound) list.

But that's just for the most part. Googlism also
works as a handy ready-reference application, allowing you to quickly
find answers to simple or simply asked questions. Just ask them of
Googlism in a way that can end with the word is. For example, to
discover the capital of Virginia, enter The
capital of Virginia.
To learn why the sky is blue, try The
reason the
sky is blue. Sometimes this
doesn't work very well; try the
oldest person
in the world and
you'll immediately be confronted with a variety of
contradictory information. You'd have to visit each
page represented by a result and see which answer, if any, best suits
your research needs.

5.12.4. Expanding the Application

This application is a lot of fun, but it could be expanded. The trick
is to determine how web page creators generate statements.

For example, when initially describing an acronym, many writers use
the words "stands for". So you could add a
Googlism that searches for your keyword and the phrase
"stands for." Do a Google search
for "SETI stands
for" and "DDR
stands for" and
you'll see what I mean.

When referring to animals, plants, and even stones, the phrase
"are found" is often used, so you
could add a Googlism that located things. Do a Google search for
sapphires are
found and jaguars
are found and see what you
find.

See if you can think of any phrases that are in common usage, and
then check those phrases in Google too see how many results each
phrase has. You might get some ideas for a topic-specific Googlism
tool yourself.