Some Observations On The Latest Google Search Facility
For some time now I have considered that Google has become too popular to be truly useful, in certain situations, that is to say. For example, let's say you want to find information about a specific product such as a car, a computer program, or a fridge-freezer.
You go to the Google search box, and type in the name of the item you're interested in, and Google presents page upon page of results relating to that item.
You probably are given million of possible links.
As you've probably found yourself, the problem is that most of these links take you to websites that want to sell you that car or program or fridge-freezer. You can waste a lot of time trawling through Google's results to find a website that actually provides any useful information about the product.
The reason for this is that smart Marketeers ensure their commercial websites, through clever S.E.O techniques, are listed on the first few pages of the search results. A high position in Google's results is likely to get more hits, more hits means more sells. So it's worth spending some time and money to achieve it. Conversely, the sites providing just information, which are often the sites you're looking for, don't commit the same resources into getting a high position in Google's results.
Well, it's been a long time coming, but Google has just unveiled a handy new feature that should make it easier to find the information you want, bypassing the links to all the sites that just want to pitch to you, and this is how it works.
After searching for something, look just above and to the left of the search results and you'll see a link that says "Show Options". Click that link and a narrow panel will appear to the left of the results.
This panel contains all sorts of useful options, but the one I'm really keen on (for the reason above) is the "Reviews" link. Click that and Google will adjust its results to show only those that provide reviews of the product you were searching for. Straight away, the vast majority of the purely commercial sites will disappear!
The "Forums" link is another useful one. If you click this, the results will contain only links to web pages where the topic you searched for has been discussed by ordinary people. If you're looking for the solution to a problem, or the answer to a question, these forums are often the quickest way to find it.
Although, I would advise you to keep an open mind when reading the various comments, there can be a lot of negativity on these forums.
A little lower down, you can also choose how recently the web pages should have been published. To give you an example, I've occasionally searched for "Windows 7 release date" to see if any information had leaked out about when Windows 7 would arrive. Again, it always involved trawling through numerous results, because most led me to web pages published many months ago containing wild guesses at a release date. Now I can simply click "Past 24 hours" or "Past week" so that the results contain only recent web pages.
Lastly, you may see two more handy options further down. If you click the "More text" link, Google will quote a larger chunk of the text from each web page in its results, helping you decide more easily whether the page is worth visiting. If you click "Images from the page" you'll see a selection of the pictures from each web page beside its listing.
So, that’s it folks, I think you’ll find this new facility a veritable boon!!
Incidentally, if you happen to be searching for information on setting up
your own website, may I recommend you check out
It comes complete with fully integrated email list builder
About the Author:Frank is a Chartered Structural Engineer by profession, and runs his own Design Consultancy business.He has written a number of articles on Business, Business Opportunities and also Health & Weight Loss issues.He also trades the Forex markets
Article Source: ArticlesBase.com - Some Observations On The Latest Google Search Facility