| Google has become for many the pre-eminent Web search engine. In Feb. 1999 it moved from Alpha test version to Beta and on Sept. 21, 1999 it officially launched.
Since that time it has made its mark with its relevance ranking based on link analysis, cached pages, and aggressive growth. Since its beta release, it has had phrase searching and the - for NOT, but it did not add an OR operation until Oct. 2000. In Dec. 2000, it added title searching. In June 2000 it announced a database of over 560 million pages, which grew to over 600 million by the end of 2000 and then 1.5 billion in Dec. 2001. The 2+ billion reported on their home page as of April 2002 includes indexed pages, unindexed URLs, and other file formats. By Nov. 2002, they moved their claim up to 3 billion, and in Feb. 2004 it went to 4 billion. Use the table of contents on the left to navigate this review. Databases: Web: Indexed Web pages (also includes URLs that it has not fully indexed) and additional file types in the Web database include PDF, .ps, .doc, .xls, .txt, .ppt, .rtf, .asp, .wpd, and more. See Google Database Components for more details. Ads: Paid advertisements usually shown on the right side (or top) under a "Sponsored Links" heading Images: Picture database
Groups: Usenet news database
News: Past 30 days of Web-based news sites
Directory: A version of the Open Directory with entries ranked in Google's PageRank order
Froogle: Shopping and product search (still in beta as of March 2004)
Catalog Search: Scanned were all still in beta as of Aug. 2003. Google also has a PageRank version of the Open Directory, and above their regular results, hits from their own news headlines database, stock quotes, calculator/conversions, and a phone number database may display. In addition it offers several specialized subsets: a government database of the .gov and .mil sites; University searches; a Linux search; an Apple/Macintosh search; and a Microsoft search. The Google database is used by AOL, iWon, at Netscape's Search site. Yahoo! dropped Google in Feb. 2004 after switching from Inktomi to Google in July 2000 and then reaffirming and more closely integrating Google results in Oct. 2002.BBCiInktomi. used Google from May 2002 until March 2003 when they switched to. Strengths: -
Size and scope: It is now the largest, and includes PDF, DOC, PS, and many other file types -
Relevance based on sites' linkages and authority -
Cached archive of Web pages as the looked were indexed -
Additional databases: Google Groups, News, Directory, etc.
Weaknesses: See also the Google Inconsistencies Page -
Limited search features: no nesting, no truncation, does not support full Boolean -
Link searches must be exact and are incomplete -
Only indexes first 101 KB of a Web page and about 120 KB of PDFs -
May search for plural/singular, synonyms, and grammatical variants without telling you Default Operation: Multiple search terms are processed as an AND operation by default. Phrase matches are ranked higher | Boolean Searching: Google uses an automatic Boolean AND between terms and has slowly been moving towards more Boolean support; however, it does not yet support the AND operator, NOT operator, or full Boolean searching with the ability to nest operators. In Feb. 1999, Google added the - symbol to perform a NOT function. In Oct. 2000, they added the ability to use an OR (which must be in upper case) to do some Boolean OR operations. See the Boolean Searching on Google page for more details on how to get Google to do certain kinds of Boolean searches. The + used to be able to be used to require a term, but since the default operation was AND, the + was never really needed and for a while caused the following message to appear: |
| Google always searches for pages containing all the words in your query, so you do not need to use + in front of words. However, the + can be used for forcing a search on stop words and for requiring Google to search for only that exact term without any possible plural/singular, synonyms, and grammatical variants. |
