Have you ever looked through your Facebook feed and thought to yourself “It would be really awesome if all of this useless crap came up when I was searching for something?” Me neither! Google seems to think differently though, so last week they started flooding everyone’s search results with a bunch of nonsense. Happily they’re not complete idiots – they did provide a way to turn this crap off. Let’s get right to that.

The Fix

Are you ready to restore sanity to your search results? Pull up a Google search. See the personalized results at top, then swear (loudly if you’re at home or quietly if you’re at work). When you’re done swearing, click the gear in the top-right corner. Click “Search Settings“, and you’ll find this amazing option:

Click the “Do not use personal results” button with the enthusiasm of a kid stealing candy. Make sure you click “Save” before leaving this page, or the frustration during your next search will be immense.

That’s it! Google is back to not sucking, and you can go back to being a well-adjusted person (if you were well-adjusted before, of course).

Some Background

What was Google thinking? Well, here’s the story so far. Google fears Facebook, because Facebook is the only company on earth with comparable amounts of your personal information to exploit. Which brings us to Google Plus, the latest of Google’s many freaking attempts to create a repository of your personal preferences, friendships and interactions social network.

Plus is different than previous attempts, though, in that Google is pushing it, hard. Sure, Buzz was integrated with Gmail, but Plus goes way beyond that – we’re talking about TV ads, integration with Android, and even a big freaking arrow on the Google homepage:

And then, last week, Google decided they really wanted to piss off their user base. Now Google Plus posts are now integrated with Google search itself. That’s right – the totality of human knowledge, filtered through your friends and family.

No offense to the people I know; most of you guys are perfectly acceptable human beings. I just don’t want your input on the hundreds of searches I run each day. It clutters my search for information, and puts me inside a social bubble instead of helping me engage with the wider world.

Conclusion

Did you turn this off? Did it somewhat improve the quality of your life? Let us know in the comments below. Also feel free to rant about this being a bad decision on Google’s part, because that’s totally what I just did.

Did you not turn this off? Then, please add us on Google Plus to clutter your search results with our articles get awesome updates from us!

So what is this graphing functionality all about? In short, it’s a simple way to plot numerous mathematical functions, right on Google.com’s search results page. Simply head over to Google.com and type in the function of your choice in the search box. Instantly, an interactive graph will pop up, complete with zoom buttons, pan options and the ability to see the x and y values for every single dot on the function’s line.

If you’re interested in seeing how different functions relate to one another, try writing down several of them, separated by commas. The different functions will be presented in different colors, and you can switch between them using the dropdown menu on the right.

Whether you’re a true math lover, a math student, or just curious to see how even mathematical functions can be fun to play with, head over to Google.com and give it a try. And don’t forget to share your thoughts about it in the comments.

Source: Google Inside Search Blog
Image Credit: Young Teacher & Blackboard

The upgrade brings to the app many features we already know from the desktop version, but they are now seamlessly implemented into the touch interface of iOS devices. Among the new features are instant search, new and improved image carousel, side to side browsing and search results previews.

The new Google app is actually a browser for all intents and purposes. You can search by typing or by voice, and then browse search results in the usual list or in instant previews.

A toolbar just below the search box allows you to filter your results, just like you can do on your desktop, and view only images, videos, news, etc. Viewing images is now an upgraded experience, with an image carousel you can browse by swiping left or right.

While checking out results, you can load any page and then slide it to the left and right so you can view both your pages and your search results simultaneously.

There’s also easy find on page, social sharing, visual history browsing, easy access to other Google apps, and more. Watch this video from Google for a walkthrough of the new features.

Source: Official Google Mobile Blog

We search with our browsers. That’s why it makes sense to have a search app on our browser of choice. CloudMagic is a browser extension for Chrome and Firefox. It is supported on Windows XP and above, Mac OS X 10.5+ & Linux (32- & 64-bit) kernel versions 2.4.x and above.

I am trying out CloudMagic 3.11 Beta on Firefox which is a 2.9 MB install.

Setting It Up With Your Accounts

There’s nothing much to do really. You install the browser extension and add your accounts for the respective services. CloudMagic goes to work indexing all the data in the services you have authenticated…and it’s fast. CloudMagic supports multiple accounts.

That’s nice, but what’s nicer is that CloudMagic stores all log-in details and the indexed data locally. That’s a few extra points for security, privacy, and peace of mind.

Super-Fast Instant Search…& All In One Place

Search should be at express speed. Nor arguments on that. No arguments also because CloudMagic search IS fast. As you can see that the magic all happens from the little floating box which makes an appearance when you log-in to one of your accounts.

You can bolster the search further by playing around with the settings on view. You can open up separate search windows, replace your default search (for e.g. Gmail’s search), or click on Preferences and put a check against Enable combined search.

Remember: As the data is indexed and kept locally, you can search through your multiple accounts even in the offline mode and also when you aren’t logged into the other registered accounts. I think that’s a pretty powerful option to have especially for your services on the cloud.

Here’s how a search appears. You can click on those orange colored highlighted keywords and open up a preview of the document that has it. You can click on the Events, Docs, Contacts, and Tweets tab to get the search hits on those apps. I find it especially useful when I want to quickly look up a contact or a document in Google Docs. That’s a plus because CloudMagic helps you search n’ work so smoothly between Gmail and Google Docs and across all your accounts registered with CloudMagic.

I am not going to get Steve Jobs in my Contacts, but definitely there are some mentions on my Twitter feed.

Another thing you will immediately notice is that CloudMagic goes to work immediately as you start typing. That helps you to narrow down on the right kind of search by trying out partial keywords.

For Power Users – The Advanced Search Operators

CloudMagic supports the same advanced search operators as Google and Twitter thus giving power users another spanner to work with. You can use it from the regular search box itself. Here’s a quick look at the page which lists them.

A Good N’ Fast Twitter Search

There’s little doubt that the default Gmail search is a speedy beast. But I can’t say the same for Twitter search always. It also has a few limitations as due to resource constraints, not every Tweet can be indexed in Twitter Search. It reaches back to only the last ten days and there’s a cap (I think) on the number of tweets indexed. It’s also not search-as-you-type like Google Instant. By indexing your Twitter timeline locally, you get to work around these limitations. And you can go offline too.

It’s All About Speed Baby!

Search is about speed and hitting the bull’s eye. CloudMagic delivers on both counts. It also delivers on the other productivity counts like giving us a single integrated interface that links all the supported accounts – offline or online.

Give CloudMagic a run and tell us if you find it to be a worthy ally in your efforts to search the cloud.

Tag clouds became a default of many blogs and were as common as fleas on a dog’s back, till their relative importance declined somewhat. But tag clouds still offer a different way to search because it is so visual and quick. The eye prefers to pan and scan rather than go vertically or horizontally in search of information. So, some web services have continued to take the help of tag clouds. Here are six web services that help you look for content using tag clouds.

Quintura

The search engine touts the advantages of ‘visual find’. The search engine with a tag cloud feature does work for me because along with the linear list of results it gives me a tag loud of related keywords. A mouse-over the related keywords gives me a preview of the search results I can expect if I do a search with that. Quintura’s tag based search works because if you are searching for something without a definite idea, the related keywords help out to broaden your options. Quintura also gives you a free web search client. The 4.4 MB free search software helps you to search the web using a selected search engine. We have mentioned Quintura before when we talked about The Top 5 Google Alternatives and Why You Should Use Them.

Search Cloudlet (Firefox)

The search add-on for Firefox inserts smart tag clouds into Google, Yahoo, and Twitter interface to help you search faster. Search Cloudlet seamlessly inserts a tag cloud as you conduct your usual search. As you can see in the screenshot, it helps you to scan and read the tags instead of drilling down through the list of search results. You can also remove keywords highlighting it in red with a mouse-over and clicking on the word. Search Cloudlet however did not work for me on Twitter search as intended. The add-on is not perfect, but it’s still worth keeping for what the tag cloud enabler gives you.

If you want to catch what’s trending on Twitter with the help of a tag cloud, try Twitscoop instead.

Deeperweb.com

Deeperweb again helps you improve your Google search results with a tag cloud. It also comes with a Firefox add-on. Deeperweb allows you to again extend your search by giving you relevant keywords in the tag cloud. You can fine tune the search by removing none-essential keywords. Get the complete Deeperweb experience as it has lots more to offer beyond the standard Google search.

SenseBot

Sensebot is not pretty to look at but it does bring out relevant key phrases from the search results as it summarizes search results for you. The semantic search engine also summarizes news searches. You can customize the summary by choosing to leave out few of the links. Sensebot gives you the choice of using Google, Yahoo, and Bing along with its own semantic search engine to conduct the search.

YouTube Cloud

Searching through thousands of videos is a mean feat. YouTube does have a good search but the third-party YouTube tag cloud gives you something more to work with. You can quickly filter YouTube videos to catch the most viewed, most trending, or the most popular ones. You can also use the dropdowns to select videos using a time frame, categories, and country. The tag cloud then makes it a cinch as you just have to select the bigger words to get to the best YouTube video among the rest (any surprises that it’s a video for an iPhone 5 preview). You can also personalize YouTube Cloud to display the tag cloud your way.

Tag clouds won’t always give you the right result you are looking for. But compared to the list like display of search results, it gives you a more sweeping picture of what’s available. It highlight’s the important and combined with a traditional approach to search might help you to get rid of the fluff on the search page.

We have featured many search engines and the ways they use to search the web. Have you tried the tag approach? Do you think it gives you a better glimpse into your searches?

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

The Inside Search Playground is a slight detour in the maze of Google services. But it’s here that you can – feed your curiosity, test your search skills and explore topics in a whole new way – as Google itself says. It’s difficult to exactly define what it is, except to say that it’s packed with features that give you several new ways to play around with Google Search. Oh yes, it is ‘flashily stylish’ too.

Find Out What Do You Love

What Do You Love is a search engine in itself, but it’s like a meta-search engine which brings in results from most of Google’s web services, from news to mobile search, to answer your search query. What you get is your own Google mini-portal for a particular search. All that’s left for you to do is to dive in and start feeding on the information that’s out there.

A Doodle Timeline

We have talked about Doodles before, but around here you get to use a cool timeline slider to browse through the Doodle gallery. You can also mouse-over the dots to see a preview of a Doodle. This one is lot more fun than the earlier simple webpage gallery.

Take a Stab at Google Trivia

I have the most fun here. A Google a Day is a trivia game, and a tough one at that. You are asked a trivia question and you can ‘cheat’ by using any of the Google services. If you think it’s easy, it’s not as you have to go against the clock. If you are a slowpoke, then play normally. But it’s the best way I know of learning how to search Google using the advanced search operators (check the Tips & Tricks section).

Choose a Champ at Demo Slam

Demo Slam is like a head-to-head between Google projects. Sounds boring? Nah…just try it out! Google white coats submit most of the demo projects, but you, me, and Irene can join in too and vie to become the champs. Browse through the site and tell us your favorite demo project. Mine is the Road Trip on Route 66. You can click on the gallery too and see the whole lineup. Tech demos are fun again.

Look at a Day’s Worth of Google Searches around the World

You are not the only one who is searching on Google. What does the world look like with all those people tapping away at their keyboards – the cool Search Globe shows you. You can also scroll down and look at the very interesting Life of a Query which reveals interesting facts about how Google Search operates. Keep scrolling down for few more tidbits rendered appealingly. For instance, you can go under the hood and learn how Google conducts its experiments. Each factoid is presented as you splash the ‘chemicals’ on the page.

The Google Globe wasn’t rendering for me at that precise moment. It could be a temporary glitch. I used the image from the Official Google Blog.

Help Your Parents Be Friends with Google

Are you the resident tech expert? If family, friends, and the dog are turning you into the local professor, just point them to the how-to videos hosted here. The beautifully organized site handholds them through the basics to an advanced stage where they can even create a FAT32 hard-drive partition. You can send the videos packaged as like a ‘gift’.

Make Your Own Search Stories

Make Your Own Search Stories is a fun video creation tool that lets you go all wild, crazy, and imaginative with your Google searches and stitch them together into a story backed up with music. Parisian Love is one of the well-known ones. Watch it and many more to get your own ideas.

Is This The Google Search Engine We Know?

Here, you get a different looking search engine which takes you through the paces of a search by scrolling with the arrows or clicking on the little colored dots. It’s a neat tool to explore all the facets of Google Search quickly without looking at any help file.

The Playground is a fun place to be if you are new to Google or just don’t about all its power yet. Heck, I am a veteran, but I still found the trivia and demo slam rounds to be fun. It helped me know my favorite search engine a bit better. What about you? Does the slew of pages here make you appreciate that it’s a whole lot more than juts typing in a search? Tell us…

The search preview (working from the magnifying glass icon) keeps getting in the users’ way when they are trying to copy anything from search results or just browse further. A +1 button is too easy to click by mistake (and it can actually be distracting). The sidebar with search options moves the search results to the right and also distracts from the normal search process (especially if you never need the options).

While we are waiting for Google to give their users the choice (offering an easy way to switch any of the new features off from their own Options section), here are a few ways to simplify search results:

1. Use Google Mobile

This is the easiest and the quickest solution – just use the Google Mobile interface for your desktop browser.  Simply bookmark Google Mobile.

Here’s how you can add this search to your browser - Google Chrome, Firefox, Opera

2. Use A Combination Of User Scripts

We have covered quite a few tips previously – each tip helps to solve part of the problem; now combine them to get rid of all (or selected) annoyances:

• Here is how you can get rid of the Google Search Sidebar (by using a Greasemonkey script or creating a search plugin. Note that the URL tweak mentioned in that post doesn’t seem to work any longer).
• Find the tips on disabling Google Instant and Google Suggest here (the last part contains some tips on disabling Google preview).
• Finally, learn how to strip the Google tracking code from search result URLs (to easily copy target URLs right from search results pages).

Before:

After:

3. Use Third-Party Custom Searches

You can create Google custom searches yourself or you can use one of multiple already built Google search tools that strip everything except the actual search results.

Note however that the results through Google API can be somewhat different from what Google shows through their own normal web interface (for example custom search results will be depersonalized). However unless you are a search marketing professional who focuses on how Google ranks webpages), you are unlikely to ever notice the difference.

Here are two possible custom Google search tools to try using - D8Search and Safe-Find (the latter uses Google’s filtered SafeSearch technology to block adult material from your search results).

• No tracking code in the URL: you can “Copy Link Location” and easily paste the full URL any time.
• No Instant Preview and no +1 button.
• No left-sidebar search options (D8Search moves some of the most useful options next to the search bar).
• Unlike Google Mobile, these will also strip “Indented Results” (these are results from the same domains – Google usually shows them in one cluster). Both the Google Mobile and Custom search tools will strip Google Sitelinks (extra results from the same domain displayed in two columns).

Compare:

Normal search results (you can see the sitelinks in a red frame):

Google Mobile results (you can see “Indented Results” in the red frame):

Custom search results (one result per domain):

As far as you can see, there’s no single good solution for those who only want to search and nothing else. However playing with various possible workarounds is likely to help you find what works for you. Good luck!

I’d love you to complete this tutorial with your own suggestions and tips!

However, sadly, none of the above options are perfect and none of them are as good as regular Google search “web” results. The Google Alerts tool has no option to only get results from “Web” (these results are only included in the “Everything” option), the Google News index is much smaller than the general index and Google Blog Search is too spammed.

Therefore, the best way to monitor recent pages indexed by Google around your search term (which can be your business or personal brand name, your favorite website or even your town, if you are, for example, a local journalist), is to scan daily through “Past 24 hours” search results:

Here are a few tools that both track pages on Google’s search results and remind you to check that page regularly (via email or browser update):

1. Track Engine

Track Engine is the oldest tool I am aware of that lets you track results on any page and delivers you the changes via email). I’ve been using it for ages to monitor recent web mentions of my personal projects or name. The free version of the tool lets you track 5 pages which have proved enough for me.

When adding a new page (“bookmark”) to monitor you can:

• Set how often you want to track the page (from once in two hours to once a week);
• Set the tool to highlight the changes on a page;
• Set the color to highlight the changes;
• Track changes to particular page elements (hyperlinks, images, numbers or dates);
• Disable tracking during weekends or weekdays;

Here is a sample of results delivered to your inbox:

2. Update Scanner (Firefox)

Update Scanner is another option that can help you monitor websites that do not offer an RSS or email subscription option. It reminds you to check out the changes via the browser alert.

To add a page to the scanner, right click on it and select “Scan Page for Updates“. In the dialog you can specify:

• How often you want the page to be scanned for changes;
• How huge the change should be for it to be highlighted (for example, you can ignore all changes which are less than 100 characters):

Here is a sample of Google search results scanned:

3. Page Monitor (Google Chrome)

Page Monitor is a valuable option for Google Chrome users. Like the above one, it also sends updates via browser alerts.

For each new added page, you can:

• Set how often you want the page scanned;
• Select the specific part of the page to track (via the “Pick” button in the “Advanced” section)
• Enable sound notifications;
• Enable desktop alerts.

Here is a sample of Google search results scanned:

Are you making the most of Google’s “Date” filters? Please share your tips in the comments!