Rating: 
Summary: Good Book
Review: Google.com is a search engine that came onto the web in 1998. Since then it has grown to be one of the more used search engines on the web. In April of 2002 , the Google Engineering Team released an API to their search engine technology. Google Hacks: 100 Industrial-Strength Tips & Tools (Google Hacks) gives the reader a background on how to use google effectively, a detailed listing of google's services, and many ways to access google.com.I like the new Hacks series of books from O'Reilly. Each title in this series gives the reader 100 tips and tools on the topic at hand. Each tip includes a brief description of the hack and a complexity rating. In Google Hacks the authors give each tip a complete walk through, with many including a full code listing. The two chapters on Third-Party and Non-API google introduces the reader to new ways to get at google data that many users may not have thought of before. Hack 37 is an explanation of how to get google web searches via email. There are six hacks that if used and abused will get your IP address banned from google, so use at your own risk. The chapters on the google API make up the meat of the book. The API is used to offer ideas to show the reader what is possible with the API. For those that are more visually minded, hack #64 is about the TouchGraph Google Browser. TouchGraph is a Java applet allows the user to start with a page and then it graphically shows pages that are similar to it. For the non-perl inclined, hacks are included, with full source code, for Python, Java, C#, and PHP. Anyone who programs web applications and manages websites needs to get this book, if only for the final eight hacks in the book. One hack (#95) delves into the PageRank algorithm that google uses to rank web pages. Hack 96, 26 Step to 15K hits a day, should be required reading for anyone wanting to start a web site and have it take off. At [the price], this book is a great buy. It doesn't suffer from any glaring editing problems, and is very useful to anyone using google.com.
Rating: 
Summary: If you are a web developer
Review: I am a beginner web developer. I heard a lot about this book and heard I should get it. From the content I read it is outstanding but a little advanced. And for actual web developing and understanding Google there is only one chapter that focused on what I needed.
And in my opinion was worth the buy. And frankly I didn't want to share this review because I don't want my competition knowing the secrets. There was a reason this was a best seller. The section about how to get 15K visitors a day makes you take a hard look at your current website. It provides the rights and wrongs and hints at sticking with legitimate website building techniques. Keeps you honest. Which is the way it should be. And for that honesty you get rewarded handsomely on the search engine.
Rating:
Summary: Nice Book
Review: I am a Search Engine Optimization Consultant myself and I must say that this book is really worth a buy and deserves a prime spot on your Book Shelf. I know some people say that things are pretty much standard....but you just can't expect something to Hack into Google in this book. It is basically a very NICELY organized source of Tips and Tricks to use Google and somethings that work out wonderful because of the Google API. Overall a must read and a great publication from O'Reilly. if you need more details or personally comments about this book, feel free to email me or IM me. My contact info is available at http://www.nakulgoyal.com
Rating: 
Summary: Not much help to a regular researcher
Review: I do lots of web-based research for my job. I have to find obscure statistics, reports, papers, articles, and various other difficut-to-find information. I thought that this book would help me use Google more effectively, but really it didn't. It is more for computer buffs rather than researchers who use Google for research. A lot of the suggestions and tips involved using some kind of code which I didn't know what it meant and a lot of them were silly kind of things like how to make your screen appear backwards or upside down. It covered the basic important things like "word order matters," and how to use "and" and "or" when searching. There were a few slightly helpful tips, but not enough to make it worth it to buy the whole book. I'm sure the book might be great for other purposes, just not for your run-of-the-mill researcher who is pretty computer savy, but not really "into" computers for a hobby.
Rating:
Summary: Good Book but the info can be found elsewhere
Review: I found Google Hacks to be very good as a book that compiles the tips and tricks of using the google site. The only issue is that most of the info is easily available from web sites and other free sources if you know where to look. The book is well written and concise. If you use google alot or need specialized info on google I would recommend this book.
Rating:
Summary: Good Book but the info can be found elsewhere
Review: I found Google Hacks to be very good as a book that compiles the tips and tricks of using the google site. The only issue is that most of the info is easily available from web sites and other free sources if you know where to look. The book is well written and concise. If you use google alot or need specialized info on google I would recommend this book.
Rating:
Summary: Google Hacks
Review: I have just read two cool freaking books! Google Hacks by Calishain and Dornfest. And Make Every Girl Want You by Fate and Reil. They both give you a behind-the-scenes look: the former at the most powerful search engine on earth, and the latter at the most mis-understood beings on earth (women). I never realized that Google is so powerful!! We got this book at my company (I work in an IT department), and have been passing it around non-stop. We have already started implementing some of the suggestions, and have a project on the table to rebuild our web site to take advantage of others. And don't be deceived by the title: hacker doesn't mean hacker in a bad way. It's OK to hack into Google: you're not causing any problems! The cool thing about this book is the depth of the hacks. I mean: these aren't just Boolean searching tips. This involves using Google API calls to build and modify scripts! How cool! And powerful!!
Rating:
Summary: Google Hacks Rocks!
Review: I just finished reading Google Hacks and found a ton of useful information between the covers (in fact, I had to put the book down several times just to run off and play with some of the hacks). This book seemed to have something for everyone; Google API scripts, tips for improving your Google searches, online tools using Google, and some great Google games.
Rating:
Summary: Google Hacks Rock!
Review: I used to say that if you give me five minutes, I can find what I'm looking for on the web. After reading this book, I may have to revise that to three minutes. If you get a chance to get this book, do so!
Rating:
Summary: Excellent for most, but not much there for techs/programmers
Review: I was disappointed in this book. I bought it mainly because of the positive reviews on amazon(.com), but I spent some time with it and I didn't really find much that was useful that I didn't already know. However, I had already spent a lot of time exploring Google in the past, and spent the last five years administering systems, including web servers. "Hacks" in the title is a misnomer. There's a section of cool hacks outside the Google API, but most of the book is simply a manual to Google. I don't see using built in features as "hacking" (which is a positive term, "cracking" is the term for what pop culture calls hacking). The book is definitely readable from beginning to end, but would be most useful as a reference for a specific task than a general guide. All the information in the book is correct, and it's fairly entertaining reading for a book about a search engine. There is a ton of useful information for most average computer users - things that can help you find what you're looking for, faster, easier, less hassle, more fun. Google is indeed much more than "just" a search engine. This would be excellent for people who use the web a lot for anything, but especially researchers. My problem is that it seems to be marketed toward the computer professional, someone with at least a little programming experience. Smart move, how many others are going to buy a book about a search engine? The reviews I read raved at how useful it was to them, as programmers. However, I found most of the book to be either stuff I already knew, stuff that you could easily find in online help, or things that aren't very useful. I still did get a few things out of it. I didn't know about the phone book lookups, newsgroup archives, and there is some good stuff for webmasters at the end. A lot of the scripts and script ideas are somewhat interesting, but do not seem generally useful. Of course, I didn't know all the syntax and a bunch of other details, but this stuff is available easily by clicking the help button. The first few chapters are generally and widely useful. The games are interesting, I guess. For a lot of the stuff in the middle and the end, some programming experience is very useful. People who have this experience don't need the beginning. But the people who need the beginning probably can't do much with the rest, though it is still readable and interesting. Overall, if you are interested enough to be reading reviews about it, I would probably recommend buying it, but not for tech-types who already know Google pretty well. Still, I can't really imagine someone for whom large parts of this book would be either not useful or not relevant. For occasional search engine users it would be extremely helpful, but how many from this group are going to sit down with a book about a search engine? O'Reilly, the publisher, produces excellent books on all kinds of tech topics, and this is the first I've been disappointed with. Several of their books are considered the definitive resource on their topics, and served as my guides to learning Unix and different programming languages. I would not have bought this book if it wasn't from them.
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