Amazon.com Amazon.com Review (ISBN 0131471481, Paperback)

It's easy to be suspicious of a book about how to use search engines. After all, search engines are designed to be simple to use: You just type in your keywords and go. Web Search Garage takes over at the far end of what is obvious, where author Tara Calishain explains how to use little-known search engines (particularly specialized ones) and unadvertised features of more famous search tools (mainly Google and Yahoo). She also describes some clever hacks that are engine independent, such as the fact that U.S. states have official URLs ending with their postal abbreviation and .us, as in .wa.us for the state of Washington. You can narrow searches usefully with that bit of knowledge. To cite another example, you can use the idea of combining Google's wildcard capability with its exact-match search capability in queries like, "there are * types of horse" to yield reasonable-sized lists of useful hits.

The hints and ideas are thick in this modest-sized book, and they're consistently outside the realm of what most of us would figure out for ourselves. In browsing this book, you'll issue mental "Ah!" exclamations fairly frequently, and you'll find yourself motivated to store Web Search Garage near the place where you do most of your browsing. After it first saves you some time, you'll be reaching for it frequently to get its advice. --David Wall

Topics covered: How to find the Web pages and information you want using Google, Yahoo, and other online search resources. Search syntax, keyword selection, and little-known features of search engines all get attention.