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Summary: Not a book for webmasters!
Review: If you are attempting to purchase this book in efforts to better understand Google its worth a glance. If you are interested in API applications it is worth the purchase. If you are attempting to improve site rankings, do not waste your time, this book will not help.
Rating: 
Summary: Be sure to read the reviews before you purchase
Review: If you are looking for a book on the Google API and how to do better searching on Google, this book is outstanding. If you are looking for a book to give you lots of tips on improving your Google search engine ranking, this isn't the right book.I do a LOT of research on the Internet and this book has been extremely useful in narrowing my searches so that I sift through "less junk". The countless hours this book has saved me has paid for it many times over. I haven't done any Google API programming, so I don't have any opinion on that part of the book (which is the majority of the book).
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Summary: GOOD, FAST READ FOR THE LAYMAN. DO YOU KNOW GOOGLE LABS?
Review: If you are looking for a compilation of googling tips and tricks in a neatly bound format, with a useful index and great visuals, this little collection is as good as it gets. The book is expected O'Reilly cadre -- crisply written by pros who aren't winging it. Yet, it still puzzles me why this info was necessary in a book form, particularly given the most likely intended audience. Most or even ALL of this info is available either on Google itself, especially on "Google Labs", or on frequently read websites such as Slashdot or Kuro5hin. Recommended if you want to skip some on-computer reading, but I am still waiting to find tricks here that I haven't found elsewhere on the net for a whopping $0.00.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent!
Review: If you think you know how to use Google, read this book and you will see how you only use a tiny part of Google.
There is a lot of power behind Google and Google Hacks tells you in excellent details how to take advantage to all the great power behind Google.
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Summary: Great Resource
Review: If you want a great resource to maximize your Google search, the first 90 pages or so are for you. I have picked up quite a few tricks that I now use everyday in my research at work. The bulk of the book deals with the API, and writing applications with it, or integrating it into your exisiting web pages. The next 40 pages or so get you started and are at a level that almost any web developer can understand and apply. After that, the book hits the API pretty hard, and you are going to need a Google Developer key, and some knowledge or Perl or other scripting language to really make use of it. Even if you dont regularly use Perl, if you know any script at all you can follow along, and it is actually very interesting. If you are looking for a end-to end Google user's guide, you will find some of that here, but web developers will benefit most.
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Summary: Excellent, but the title is misleading
Review: If you're looking for a book that will teach you to do more effective searches in Google... this isn't it, although it does have a fair number of hacks usable directly from the search window. You can find plenty of good information on doing effective searching in Google itself, in the "All About Google" section, where you'll find a tutorial entitled "How to Search". "Google Hacks" is really for the programmer looking to integrate Google into other web apps. While a good deal of information on the Google API can be found at Google, along with the downloadable developer's kit, this book provides a number of excellent examples of scripts in various languages. It's not a tutorial, but rather a compilation of shorts hacks and scripts that use Perl (of course), XML, Python, Java, C# and probably others I'm forgetting to add Google functionality to applications. This isn't a book for the complete novice at scripting, but beginners shouldn't be put off by it. If you have a basic understanding of Perl and HTTP there's a good deal of useful information to be gleaned here.
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Summary: Google Whacks, Google Smacks, Google Whacks!
Review: In a smoke-filled darkened room the faceless, nameless young man sits silently pouring over screens and screens of data. Reading the scrolling text that flies across the screen searching for that one magic phrase. Is it day or night? Is it Monday or Wednesday? He hasn't a clue; all he cares about is one thing -- hacking. If this is what you expect the newly released O'Reilly book Google Hacks to be about, well, I am afraid that you need to mosey on over to the fiction section. This book is a collection of tips, trips, workaround and "not-so-secret" techniques that you can use to enrich your Google experience. Now, I know what most of you are saying -- it's JUST a search engine. I type in what I want to find and see what it spits out. If this is your attitude about Google, then this book is one of the must have's you should add to your library. You will never think of Google as "just a search engine" again. Through step-by-step examples, and visual examples, the author takes you through how to use Google to its full extent. He shows you how to narrow searches and get those 2,500,000 results page down to something more manageable and more relevant to you. In essence, he shows you how to make Google work for your benefit. There is also considerable coverage given to third-party Google tools and toys -- such as Google Whacking, Google Blogging and many others. He shows you how others have taken what Google provides and expanded upon it to make games, research tools and interactive applications. You will find yourself immersed in the world of Google Whacking -- the search for the magic combination of search words that give you one, precise result! This book is geared towards those who use Google for searching and research purposes as well as those who want to incorporate Google's tools into their own sites. The author goes into detail about the newly released Google API for incorporating content into your site and other programs. Novice users should not be afraid of the technical complexity this book has in some places; they can simply skip over the more technical parts without fear of missing out on the important details. Overall, this is the perfect companion book for those who find themselves using Google as their main research tool. It will help you become a better Google user, and help you to use the power of Google to further your research along and give you the precise information you need.
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Summary: May well be "essential" for 'net browsers
Review: It has been quite a while since I have come across a book I'd label 'essential.' The last for non-programming computer users was Robin Williams' 'The Mac Is Not A Typewriter' which I bought for a number of new Macintosh users. 'Google Hacks' by Tara Calishain and Rael Dornfest and published by O'Reilly will appeal to an even wider audience, I can imagine buying this for friends who haven't cottoned on to 'net searching at all and friends who complain "Google returns too many sites." People who are afraid to code shouldn't be put off by the "Hacks" in the title: O'Reilly have obviously taken a wider meaning of "hack" than just a neat piece of code. This book is a marvelous compendium of tips and tricks for Google, ranging from simple ways of getting the search results you want, through using Google's newer services such as phone books and image search, all the way to advanced ways of using scrapers and the Google API. The book demonstrates 100 hacks, of which close to half are useful for everyone -- newbie, programmer and non-programmer alike. The first 35 hacks, in chapters one and two, will educate you about the intricacies of getting the best out of searching both Google's main web catalog and the newer 'Special Services and Collections.' This is the part of the book that should be essential reading for Google users -- in the two days I've had this book these have proved invaluable. The rest are for those who are either looking for extremely advanced search tips, increasing their web site's Google page rank, or programming an application to use the Google data -- all topics well covered in this volume. What's Good In This Book To start, it is well written, well laid out with a good contents section, good index, and some appropriate introductory material before getting down to the first hack. Each of the hacks are numbered and a single hack will often cross-reference other hacks that add information relevant to it. The hacks in each chapter nicely add on each other in both complexity and function. The hacks themselves seem to cover every area of Google that you might want. They range from the downright frivolous (there is a chapter "Google Pranks and Games") to serious ways of improving your search results and excellent examples of good ways to use the Google API. Most of the code fragments are in Perl, and among the hacks are ways of getting the job done without over extensive use of extra modules such as XML Parsers and SOAP::Lite (including a hack that uses regular expressions to parse the XML). What's Bad In This Book It's hard to find anything bad to say, apart from some frustration that a couple of the hacks that interested me used ASP or VB rather than a more portable language. Oh, another minor quibble, the allied web site O'Reilly Hacks Series has been slow and has none of the code in the book or any of the URLs mentioned listed anywhere -- it seems more geared towards marketing the books than helping the readers.
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Summary: It is the best book!
Review: It is the best book!It is the best book!
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Summary: Ever more stuff to love about Google...
Review: It seems like nary a month goes by that I don't learn something new about Google that hooks me ever more deeply into the site. After reading Google Hacks (2nd Edition) by Tara Calishain and Rael Dornfest (O'Reilly), I have enough "hooks" for the next year...
Chapter list: Web; Advanced Web; Images; News and Groups; Add-Ons; Gmail; Ads; Webmastering; Programming Google; Index
You probably know it by now, but the Hacks concept is built around 100 cool tips, tricks, and "hacks" related to the particular subject of the book. In this case, the subject is Google. I must have missed the first edition, because I don't remember ever reading any of this material in this form before. The first chapter deals with basic search tricks like mapping (#7 - Think Global, Google Local) and stock tracking (#8 - Track Stocks). Nothing incredibly new there that I haven't seen elsewhere, even though I may not always remember it when I need to. :-) The advanced section starts to pick up with things like #46 - Spot Trends with Geotargeting and #47 - Bring the Google Calculator to the Command Line. Learning how to "browse" the World Wide photo album in #51 was cool. For me, the book completely earned its keep with the gmail chapter. I didn't know about "plus addressing", which really rocks. And based on #79 - Use Gmail as a Windows Drive, I now have a 1 GB spare hard drive that I can use to transfer 10 MB files (or less) from home to work and back... Tres cool!
If you have a background in programming, you'll get even more out of the book. There are plenty of scripting examples using Perl, Python, and other languages that allow you to manipulate the Google API to integrate Google features into your applications. But even if that's not your forte, you'll still benefit a lot from the non-programming tips. Especially if you've never taken a lesson in the search syntax that Google provides.
If Google is your search engine of choice but you've never gotten beyond the basic search interface, you need this book. There's a whole world out there you know nothing about... Highly recommended.
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