Other Ways to Query Google

While I think Google offers a very easy-to-use search interface, not everyone finds it quite as easy to work with Google's advanced search operators, even when they're using the Advanced Search page. To that end, several third-party developers have created their own front ends to the Google search engine. These sites let you create advanced queries without learning all of Google's advanced search operators, or slogging your way through the Advanced Search page. You may want to give them a try, especially if you do a lot of advanced searching.

First out of the box is the Google Ultimate Interface (www.faganfinder.com/google.html). As you can see in Figure 2.35, this page offers many of the same search parameters as found on Google's Advanced Search page, but organized in a way that makes a little more sense to a lot of users. You enter your keywords into the search boxes at the top left corner of the page, and then select the other search parameters you want applied. Click the Search button and your modified query is sent to Google, and the appropriate results returned.

Figure 2.35. Google Ultimate Interface: An alternative advanced search form.

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Next, consider Soople (www.soople.com), shown in Figure 2.36. Soople is a front-end to Google that offers specific search boxes tailor-made for many of Google's specialized searches. There are search boxes for music, movies, books, videos, images, and the like, as well as for searches constrained by various parameters. It's a lot easier to enter a query into a Soople box than it is to construct the query on the Google site using advanced search operators. As with the Google Ultimate Interface, your queries are modified with the appropriate search operators and passed onto Google proper, and the ensuing search results returned to you.

Figure 2.36. Soople: Specialized Google searching made easy.

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While neither of these sites is affiliated with Google, they both forward your queries to the Google search enginemodified, of course, behind-the-scenes with the appropriate operators as determined by the type of search you select. They're worth checking out.