Zen and the Art of Google Desktop Search

I recently download the free Google Desktop Search tool, thinking it was worth a try, but not expecting a whole lot out of it. Boy was I wrong.

It has turned out to be a very valuable tool to speedup my search for that ever elusive file or image and very valuable in unexpected ways.

Case in point, I did a Google search on the keyword "longdesc" (which is a html attribute for web design). The search not only found relevant web sites on the subject, but found specific files describing the html attribute on my hard drive, and listed them along with the Internet results in the web browser. I was very impressed.

This is how the Google desktop search tool works: Once you download the tool onto your computer and install it, the tool goes through your entire hard drive logging all the files (that is to say Outlook Email, Netscape Mail, Thunderbird Mail, Word files, PDF files, Excel files, Music files, Powerpoint files, Images, Video files) putting them in an index ready to be searched. It does this almost undetectable. It only searches through your hard drive and builds its index when you aren't on your computer - very stealthy.

This tool is definitely worth a try and I recommend it highly over the lame search feature Microsoft has built into Windows XP.

Bob Erwin
NewInk Marketing
Internet Marketing, Local Business