Search engine services

These days, there’s not much difference in search capabilities and search results between the top Internet search engines. All produce current, relevant results, and lots of them.

So, the search companies are focusing more on accessories, services and extras.

Here are some of the goodies you might not be aware of that you can find and use at your favorite search engine site:

Google

www.google.com

As the digital “big dog on the block,” Google offers a lot in terms of search services and special projects.

Click the “iGoogle” link on the home page and you can create your own customized Google page, complete with specific news and information categories, a specific theme (or “skin”) and more. The entire setup process can be completed in half a minute.

In addition to searching photos, video, audio, blogs, news, shopping and more, Google also offers interesting search specific options: Patent search, scholarly papers and book search and others.

The free “Google Earth” program allows you to explore virtually any location on Earth, zooming into remarkably close images, add your own photos, mark locations for later visiting and such. This, coupled with Google Mars and Google Sky, gives you the unparalled ability to visit, within seconds, any location we know and have photos of in the heavens and on Earth.

The Google labs page offers you a chance to try out Google projects in development, such as “Google Page Creator,” “Google Trends,” “Google Code Search,” and “Alternate Views Search,” a way to see search results on a timeline, map or in an “additional info” format.

The so-called “graduates” of the Google Lab include “GOOG-411,” a free, automated directory assistance service that uses Google search results to find business phone numbers and then connect you to the business; “Google Docs & Spreadsheets,” a free online office suite of applications for documents, spreadsheets and presentations; and “Google Desktop,” which will index your computer and create a personalized search database so you can find what you’re looking for on your system.

There’s more — lots more — that Google has to offer in search services and software. To check it all out, click the “more” link on the Google home page just above the search box, then select “even more.”

Yahoo!

www.yahoo.com

Yahoo! these days is more of an interactive search magazine than a plain old search engine. You get news and information along with links to additional, related materials. You can customize the page to reflect your specific news and information interests, meaning you can create a Yahoo! page that has the news and links already in place that you’re often likely to use a search engine to find.

You can change the color and width of the Yahoo! page, as well as choose the content you want and the order in which you want it.

The tabbed structure of the site allows you to have a lot of information at your fingertips without jumping around a lot of Web pages.

Yahoo!’s other search services include “Site Explorer,” a tool that lets you access Yahoo’s information about a site’s online presence. It means you can see all the pages of a specific site indexed by Yahoo!, as well as all the other Web locations that link to the specific site. You also can learn which specific pages at a site are among the most popular in terms of search traffic.

“Yahoo! Answers” is a place where you ask a question and people around the world offer answers. Questions range from, “How does a CD work?” to “My car’s been repossessed — do I still have to make payments?” The answers range from detailed and authoritative to gossipy and inane. You can browse questions and answers by category.

The “Creative Commons Search” allows you to look for content and coding that the authors are willing to allow you to use or share for free, under certain conditions.

The “next.yahoo” section shows projects that Yahoo! developers are working on that tie in with the desire to search and find things online. Among the more interesting projects you can test are “NewsGlobe,” which lets you find news by turning and clicking on a 3D globe of the Earth, “PhotoSoup,” “Easylistener,” “Pipes,” “Y! Live” and more.

To get to all the special services, click the “more” link on the Yahoo! main page over the search box and select, “All Search Services.”

Ask

www.ask.com

Ask has been the “search engine stepchild” for years, virtually forgotten in the corner while the more popular siblings, Google and Yahoo!, slug it out in the public marketplace.

But Ask does provide a robust and useful search engine, along with numerous special offerings.

Ask allows you to customize the look of the main search page. Choose from a series of “skins” (images and photographs) featuring great background images, or upload a skin of your own.

You can also use the “AskEraser,” a new privacy feature that makes sure all your search queries, activity and history will be deleted within hours from Ask.com servers. It’s a great service — after all, who wants the stuff they’re searching for online saved and possibly shared with strangers, bosses and others in the local community? So far, this service is only offered for those who use the Ask.com search site.

“Binoculars” is a feature that allows you to see what a Web site’s main page looks like before you actually have to visit the page. Simply move your pointer over the binoculars icon and the site’s main page will appear in a small popup window. You’ll also get an idea of how long it will take the page to load using a dialup connection, an indication of how many popup windows are used by the page and, if you click the “statistics” tab in the upper right corner, you’ll get an idea of the traffic to the site over the past few months.

The “Smart Answers” feature is a collection of quick facts, data and links related to your search. This information is displayed at the top of the search results list. For example, if you do a search on “Mars,” you’ll get instant facts about the planet and quick links to more pertinent data.

Other search options include image, video, map, news, shopping, weather, dictionary, stocks, famous people, blogs and movie specific searches.

For more on what Ask.com has to offer, go to the site, click the right arrow icon next to the horizontal row of icons and select “Browse Features.”

(Keith Darnay is the webmaster and designer for bismarcktribune.com. His Web site, featuring this column going back to 1995, is at www.darnay.com.iec.)