If I hadn’t started writing for WriteforCash, I never would have discovered Google.
When you first approach Google’s homepage, the first thing that you might notice about it is how uncluttered it is. On Google, you won’t find tons of rotating GIFs or ad banners for lower mortgage rates, debt consolidation, or online auctions. There are also very few graphics, so the site loads fast. Like Altavista, Google actually flashes a message that tells you how fast it took to find search results for the keywords that you typed into that field. Google also gives the results in groups of ten links per result page.
When I began writing for WriteforCash, their contributor FAQs said that if you were interested in finding out who bought your articles after you sold them to WFC, you could go to Google or NorthernLight and type in your article title. Sure enough, I found the title of one of the very few pieces that I sold to WFC. While I was there, I also typed in my full name to see if any of my articles with bylines would show up. About five articles that I had written for Themestream before they closed appeared in the search results; another article that I had written over five years ago for Quality Digest when I worked there as assistant editor also popped up. I had no clue previously that it had even been uploaded to the company Web site!
Google is good at working with the keywords that you type into it. I usually find what I am looking for in the first 30 hits, which is nicer than clicking through page after page of vague or broken links.
Google also has the option of looking through their Web directory if you just need to do a basic subject/subcategory search. From the main page, you just hit the Google Web Directory green link. This brings you to a subject directory like the old one on Infoseek (before they became Go.com). The following is a summary of the major categories on Google’s Web directory:
Arts
(Movies, Music, Television...)
Business
(Industries, Finances, Jobs...)
Computers
(Internet, Hardware, Software...)
Games
(Board, Roleplaying, Video...)
Health
(Alternative, Fitness, Medicine...)
Home
(Consumers, Homeowners, Family...)
Kids and Teens
Computers, Entertainment, School...)
News
Media, Newspapers, Current Events...)
Recreation
Food, Outdoors, Travel...)
Reference
(Education, Libraries, Maps...)
Regional
(Asia, Europe, North America...)
Science
(Biology, Psychology, Physics...)
Shopping
(Autos, Clothing, Gifts...)
Society
(Issues, People, Religion...)
Sports
(Basketball, Football, Soccer...)
World
(Deutsch, Español, Français, Italiano, Japanese, Korean, Nederlands, Polska, Svenska ... )
If you are trying to search the Internet for instances of your name, personal homepage, or Internet-related business, Google is a good place to look. If you want a search engine that offers extras like freemail and sending E-cards, weather updates, online dating services, or creating your own free Web page, I recommend using one like Webcrawler, Yahoo, or Go instead.