Using Google U.S. Government Search

There's one other topic-related specialty search I'd like to mention. This is Google's U.S. Government Search, shown in Figure 8.8. As you might suspect, this search focuses its attention solely on U.S. government websiteswhich makes it the best place to search for official government forms, information, reports, and the like.

Figure 8.8. Searching government websites with Google's U.S. Government Search.

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There are a few neat things about Google's U.S. Government Search (usgov.google.com). First, when you search from this page, Google directs your query to all the sites within the .gov domain, which includes sites for all major U.S. government agencies, Congress, and the White House. And, not to be too federalist about it, U.S. Government Search also searches all the individual state government sites in the .us and .gov domains. Suffice to say, if it's at all government-related, U.S. Government Search can find it.

The second neat thing is that U.S. Government Search is more than just a simple search page. You also get the latest news headlines in a number of government-related categories (White House News, Government Executive, and Armed Forces Information), the top headlines from the Washington Post, and today's Washington, DC weather. It's a one-stop shop for everything inside the beltwayand the perfect home page for government insiders.