All about Google - news and more news
Here are some recent observations about the Google search engine from Tara Calaishan, author of the ResearchBuzz eNewsletter.
04/15/2002
* Google Creates API Program
Google's now offering an API program at http://www.google.com/apis/ . This program allows developers to query Google from within their own programs. This program is in beta and currently restricts a program to 1000 queries a day.
These are the days I wish I knew more than a smattering of Perl; I'd love to get up to my elbows in this API and see what I could make it to. And there are some things that are really making me curious.
If you read ResearchBuzz Extra, you know that &as_qdr=mx is a Google URL hack; x=at least one and &as_qdr=mx equals how recent, in number of months, the search results should be. Here's the thing, though; how far does this go? Does &as_qdr=dx the number of days? Is &as_qdr=wx the number of weeks? Can I combine syntaxes with this method that I can't combine at the Web site?
Of course, there are bunches of people out there who are wizards and they're already putting the Google API to work or bending it to their will:
http://www.anupriyo.com/gs.shtml
http://www.xmlrpc.com/googleGateway
http://interconnected.org/googlematic/
http://www.10500bc.org/code/mt_howto_googleapi.php
http://toys.incutio.com/php/php-google-web-api.html
http://diveintomark.org/projects/#pygoogle
In the case where these are live examples, please don't pound on them. Remember that every key is restricted to 1000 searches a day.
* Google Accounts and Spell Check
Speaking of Google, in order to participate in this program you have to register for a Google Account. Oh ho ho, what is a Google Account? You can see it at http://makeashorterlink.com/?Z4AD51FA . It allows you to sign up for an account that will currently only work with the Google API Program, but the signup page adds:
"In the future, your Google account will enable login access to all Google services, including Google Groups posting, Google AdWords, the Google Store, the Google in Your Language program, and more."
I'm going to dog Google about this and let you know if I can find out anything else.
Also, Google's started getting more aggressive with spelling suggestions. If you run a search and it has no results, Google will attempt to correct the spelling and run the search again.
It doesn't always work. Run the search -- excluson windopane -- and Google will correct only the first word -- exclusion windopane -- and will not correct the second word, even though the second search gets no results. I see that Windopane is apparently the name of a band so maybe that's why it didn't work.
[source: ResearchBuzz #178, April 18, 2002]