By Danny Sullivan , August 2, 2000
By Danny Sullivan
From The Search Engine
Report
Aug. 2, 2000
The folks at Google have been busy, adding a new advanced search page, a preferences page, dictionary links and a Korean-language version.
The new advanced search page allows to perform some searches without knowing any search commands. For example, you can do a phrase search or search for pages just within a particular domain, all by filling out a form. You can also specify that you want pages in a particular language and increase the number of results returned per page, up to 100. Links to Google's specialty search engines can also be found here, such as its Linux or US Government search engines.
The new preferences page lets Google remember your favorite settings. For example, you can make it always display 100 results per page when you come to the site, rather than this being a one-off choice that the advanced search page allows. Language preferences can be set, and you are finally able to set Google's "SafeSearch" porn filter to work before you do a search.
Google now also provides dictionary definitions, served out of Dictionary.com. Do a search, then look at the status message that appears above the search results. What's the status message? That's my made-up word for the line that tells you how many pages were found for a search. For example, the status message for a search on "onomatopoeia" says this:
Google results 1-10 of about 6,680 for onomatopoeia. Search took 0.05 seconds.
In the status message, the search word will usually be an underlined clickable link -- in this case, "onomatopoeia." Selecting it takes you to Dictionary.com, where the word's meaning will be displayed. You can also switch to use the thesaurus option, once there.
I love this new addition, because it's a fast way to get word meanings. The main flaw is that if you don't know how to spell the word, you won't get the definition, much less the correct spelling.
Finally, Google is beta testing a Korean-language version of its service.
Google
http://www.google.com/
Google Advanced Search
http://www.google.com/advanced_search.html
Google Preferences Page
http://www.google.com/preferences.html
Google in Korean
http://www.google.com/intl/ko/