Easily follow the latest news based on customized areas of interest(Google Alerts)

             Google Alerts inform the user about news from specific geographical areas. How can this useful service be used more efficiently?
             Google Alerts compiles information based on search terms that can be defined. The services informs via email when there is a new search hit. In this way your favourite subjects are up to date. The price for comfort: You feed Google with personal data that the search giant uses to provide you with target oriented advertisements.

To set an alert open ‘www.google.in/alerts’. Fill the input field, give your email address and click ‘Create an alert’. The function is activated only after you click the link in the confirmation message. To receive the suitable hits, search for different terms with Google Search. You receive a message if a new hit for your search term is found under the top 10 messages or 20 search results. It is sensible to restrict the search term through many suitable queries to avoid receiving a vast number of messages or missing important messages, if the search terms are not popular.
             If you have a Google account, open ‘www.google.com/alerts/manage’, to manage the notifications. However you will first need to login to your account to manage this. There you will see active alarms that can be ‘edited’, ‘deleted’ or you can even create a new alarm. Users without a Google account can stop the service through an unsubscribe link in each notification but no longer adjust.

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Displaying more search matches on the first page of results(Google search)

           In a search query, Google delivers only ten results on the fi rst page. It often has mainly advertisements or price comparisons and you fi nd the actually desired information only after some pages in the subsequent matches.
           You can instruct the search portal to show more matches. For this, click the ‘Search settings’ link on the top of the Google page. If you are using a Google account, you can go to the ‘Search settings’ through ‘Settings’. Lower on the page, you can, for instance, increase the value in the ‘Number of results’ fi eld to ‘50’. Finally, click ‘Save settings’. Your browser must accept cookies.
NOTE: the original setting of ten results per page should keep the server load as well as the loading time of the website low. Practically speaking, these arguments no longer play any role today.

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Expand the search field in the toolbar dynamically(Firefox 2.x, 3.x)

             You quickly fall short of the space available when entering terms in the integrated search fi eld of the browser. You can no longer identify all the words then.

             You increase the size of the search fi elds by customizing the toolbar – however, this is done to the disadvantage of the address field. It is clever to increase the field size dynamically only when required. You can do this with the free add-on ‘Searchbar Autosizer’. This plug-in supports almost all Firefox Themes and many search bar add-ons.
              For configuring, open ‘Tools | Add-ons’, then search and select the ‘Searchbar Autosizer’ entry in the list and click on ‘Options’. A wizard will help you from this point onwards. For instance, select the ‘Customize step-by-step for every letter’ option and click ‘Next’. You specify the minimum width in the next step. For that, you drag the search fi eld marked with brackets to the desired size and check the value in the wizard. Then click ‘Next’ and repeat the process for the maximum width. The next step off ers a couple of additional options, which you can activate if desired, e.g. to reset the search machine to the old familiar standard automatically. Once done click the ‘Finish’ button.

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Using an alternative search machine for scientific contents(WolframAlpha)

              You are mainly doing research on scientific topics in the Internet. It is very annoying in the process that you often come across websites in the Google hits and have to compile the information you are searching for from numerous sites.

              A completely different method for searching and fi nding information on the Internet is being used by the WolframAlpha (www.wolframalpha.com) project of the physicist Stephen Wolfram. His special search machine does not refer to other websites, but processes suitable, comprehensive information from different fields for a request. The website allows you to enter randomly formulated requests. It interprets these and determines suitable fi elds from the requests, from which it then compiles the information being searched for.
              At present, the search system that is still under construction processes requests in English only. It first determines the topic searched for from the entries, but also off ers other variants for selection. WolframAlpha supplies quite comprehensive and structurally processed information with graphics and tables for the respective topic. Separate sections for diff erent thematic categories give an overview of important information and frequently off er access to more detailed data via the ‘More’ link. Even if this variety is still no competition for Google, it is still worth the try to get a comprehensive answer without ads for a short question in English.

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Searching for references to particular websites in the Internet(Google Search)

            Google displays a long list of results after you enter a website as a search term. Unfortunately, it does not show which of the hits contains a link to that particular site. This would be useful to search for links of the particular homepage for instance.
            By specifying certain keywords, you can also request for information in the Google Search, which goes beyond the normal hit list. This also includes links. The ‘link:‘ command can be found on all Internet sites, which contain a link to the typed address.
           If you are only searching for a search term in the text of the websites and want to ignore Internet addresses, titles and links in the process, then use ‘intext:‘. ‘inanchor:‘ results in the exact opposite of this.
      Use ‘cache:‘, i.e. 
‘cache:www.chip.in’ to view the version of a site stored in the cache of Google. At the upper border of the browser the search engine also informs you the date and exact time when the image was created in a grey area.
             The ‘related:‘ command fi nds websites, which have a textual link to the specified site. If you enter ‘related:www.chip.in’, a list of contents regarding different journals that deal with computer-related topics is created.
             This works well with your own homepage as well. Use the ‘related’ command to find sites that are similar in content.

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