GAPS, GARBO, and GAWSH

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That section title should get your attention. The GAPS, GARBO, and GAWSH search engines are presented by the same site and provide three distinct search experiences, each valuable in its own fashion.

Tip 

If you have a Google license key, this site encourages you to use it in all three areas. Remember, your key enables more searches in a day than you can probably launch. But a public site like this can exhaust its key allowance quickly. The considerate course is to deploy your key number whenever asked.

Tip 

Unlike too many alternative sites, this one provides detailed explanations of its features. Click the Read Me link on the GAPS, GARBO or GAWSH pages to get some help with that engine. The following sections convey the basics, certainly enough to get you started.

Proximity searching with GAPS

The Google API Proximity Search (GAPS) invites you to search for two keywords that occur within a certain proximity to each other. This tool strikes a useful middle ground between two extremes: keywords that might be located anywhere on the page, and keywords located directly next to each other, as in the case of an exact phrase. Putting the keywords close to each other but not necessarily next to each other encourages relevance without the restriction of an exact phrase. Putting the keywords close to each other but not necessarily next to each other encourages relevance without the restriction of an exact phrase.

GAPS is located here:

www.staggernation.com/cgi-bin/gaps.cgi

Figure 14-16 shows the GAPS form.

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Figure 14-16: Locate Web pages with two keywords in close proximity.

Follow these steps to design and launch a GAPS search:

  1. In the Find search boxes, type a single keyword in each box.

  2. Use the drop-down menu between the keyword boxes to select a proximity range.

    The GAPS engine is currently limited to finding keyword pairs separated by no more than three intervening words. Google doesn’t insist on this limitation, but GAPS enforces it to contain search results.

  3. In the first drop-down menu, choose in either order.

    The alternate, in that order, reduces results by forcing Google to match your first and second keywords in that order.

  4. In the next drop-down menu, choose Sort by ranking.

    Ranking is Google’s assessment of relevance. You may also sort by URL, page title, and keyword proximity. It’s easy to reset the search parameters after you see the results.

  5. In the Additional terms box, type any other keyword that you want as part of the search string.

    Here you may use operators, exact phrases, and multiple keywords.

  6. In the Show menu, select how many results you would like overall.

    I leave this setting in its default All state.

  7. In the next drop-down menu, choose how many results should be listed for each query.

    This might seem confusing. With a proximity search using these features, you are forcing Google to perform multiple searches, one for each combination of keyword order and proximity. The two keywords can be three words apart, two words apart, one word apart, or next to each other — and furthermore, they could match any of those conditions with their order reversed. This setting determines how many search results you see for each of those distinct searches.

  8. Check the Filter each query option.

    This setting refers to Google’s duplicate filter, which eliminates multiple hits from the same site.

  9. Click the Search button.

    GAPS displays results in normal fashion, with no separation of individual searches. Your sorting option determines how the results are ordered. Conveniently, GAPS reproduces the entire search form atop the search results page, so you can modify your parameters or launch a new search without backtracking.

    Tip 

    You may use the exact phrase (quotes) operator in either of the two proximity keyword boxes. Google treats the phrase as a single keyword that must exist within a certain proximity to the other keyword. The two keywords can both be phrases, for that matter. I like doing that to search for articles about two closely paired public figures. Try searching this way for “Clay Aiken” and “Ruben Studdard,” the two most recent (as of this writing) American Idol winners.

Relation browsing with GARBO

The GARBO engine performs the same sort of search as TouchGraph GoogleBrowser, described earlier in this chapter — namely, searching for sites related to a certain Web domain. Google API Relation Browsing Outliner (GARBO) adds a twist by also enabling you to search for sites that link to a certain page (Google’s link operator). Instead of displaying results in an interactive graphical spread, GARBO delivers text results that are unusually customizable. In fact, the intelligence of the results display puts GARBO on the map.

As with TouchGraph GoogleBrowser, you type a URL, not keywords, into GARBO. The search form (see Figure 14-17) is located here:

www.staggernation.com/garbo/

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Figure 14-17: The GARBO search form.

The form contains three main elements:

  • Search box: Type a URL here.

  • Related pages or linking pages: You can select related pages (Google’s Similar pages feature) or linking pages (which delivers sites containing links to your search URL). Google allows one of these searches at a time; you can’t do both.

  • Snippets and URLs: I prefer to keep the search results clean in GARBO, so I leave both these options unchecked. GARBO then displays a concise and useful folder-like results page (see Figure 14-18).

    click to expand
    Figure 14-18: GARBO search results can be displayed in folder style. Click the triangles to expand the folders.

The beauty of eliminating snippets and URLs is revealed on the search results page, which comes up with a beautiful economy. The results look and behave like a list of folders. Click a triangle next to any item to open it, revealing more detailed results within.

Tip 

Engagingly, GARBO encourages secondary searching on the search results with the View in Google link next to each opened folder when you search without snippets and URLs. Doing so conducts a relation search (or a link search, if that’s how you started) on the result URL. That is cool.

Search by host with GAWSH

Rounding out this invaluable trio of alternate Googles is Google API Web Search by Host (GAWSH). This engine takes the folder approach to results available in GARBO and makes it the default, irrevocable result format. Here, you search by keyword (with operators) and get results organized by Web domain. Each domain in the search results list can be opened, like a folder, revealing matching pages that come from that site. These revealed inner results are displayed in traditional Google format, within the opened GAWSH folder.

GAWSH is not as trivial as its description might sound — or as it might look when you first visit the search page. That page is located at this URL:

www.staggernation.com/gawsh/

The search form consists of nothing more than a keyword box and a Search button. The action is in the results page, shown in Figure 14-19. In this screen shot, I expanded one of the folders to illustrate the mixture of GAWSH formatting and Google formatting.

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Figure 14-19: GAWSH search results are folders containing standard Google results listings.

GAWSH is fantastic for bundling essential search result information into a small space for quick scanning. Most of us prefer getting information from favorite sites but don’t want to specify those sites every time we search. GAWSH reveals at a glance which sites have pages matching your keywords, enabling you to zoom into favored domains for exact matches. Every time you click an expanding folder triangle, GAWSH launches the search again, limiting it to the selected domain.

Tip 

GAWSH provides the perfect environment in which to use the negative site operator (see Chapter 2). Eliminating obvious host matches makes the resulting host list even more valuable. Try this search:
boycott RIAA -site:www.boycott-riaa.com



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Google for Dummies
Google AdWords For Dummies
ISBN: 0470455772
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2005
Pages: 188

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