How far has Google come in terms of brand recognition in just six years? Further than many companies have come in 10, and further than some will ever come.

In fact, the search engine company was named the most recognized global brand in 2003 by Interbrand, in a survey of 4,000 branding professionals, with Apple, Mini Cooper, Coca-Cola and Samsung filling out the top five. Pretty amazing for a company that first opened itself up to public view in the fall of 1998.

You might be asking, “Why do I need a book to tell me how to use Google? All I do is type in some words and out comes the answer.”

That was my initial reaction, wondering how on earth author Brad Hill could get 346 pages out of the Google interface screen, which is legendary for its simplicity.

Hidden features

Truth is, despite its simple interface, Google has many hidden features (some of which the company considers “in beta,” but remain accessible to the public if you know the URL address). The simple interface conceals some very advanced tools and learning to access those tools can lead to greatly enhanced search results.

In a sense, “Google for Dummies” offers a snapshot of the moment, but since the Internet industry changes so rapidly, it’s unlikely that many Web-related books being written today will be used as references 10 years from now.

The book, like many in the “For Dummies” series, is written in a breezy and rather informal style as opposed to an academic style. Hill includes current-event references and pop-culture anecdotes and you end up learning something about him as well as the technology about which he’s writing.

Breezy shouldn’t be confused with disorganized, however. The book is well organized, with plenty of bullet points and illustrations that serve to break meaty topics into easily digestible sections.

Hill’s writing style invites readers to pick up a chapter at any time and dive right in. I found myself reading one or two chapters a day, or skipping around to find a chapter that interested me when trying out a new Google feature.

Probing AdWords

Two chapters in particular will be of interest to Web site owners and managers. Hill devotes Chapter 11 to setting up the Google AdWords program. With AdWords, advertisers pay a fee to get their message delivered to users who enter contextually relevant search requests.

Although the program isn’t difficult to set up using credit card billing, it’s helpful to see screen captures of the process ahead of time so you know what to expect and don’t feel any time pressure with the subscription. To make AdWorks most effective, it’s essential for users to choose appropriate keywords that will boost the clickthrough rate and to decide how much to spend.

Chapter 12, “Bringing Google and Its Users to Your Site,” explains techniques to boost your Google-generated results. This chapter is somewhat thin, which probably reflects the fact that Google keeps its proprietary “PageRank” algorithm close to its vest, just as Coke keeps its formula top secret. As Hill says, “Getting your site into the Google index requires patience and networking skills, but it’s not hard. Improving your position in the index - how high your site places on search results lists - is another matter.”

Specific tips

Hill provides five very specific tips on how to make Google’s spider (the robot that actually crawls a site) rank your site more fashionably. He also warns against common techniques used to try and fool Google, which simply don’t work and may end up excluding a site from the index for a long, long time.

“Google doesn’t hesitate to banish a site from its index entirely (if) it determines that its PageRank is being artificially jiggered. No published policy states when or if a banished site is reinstated,” Hill warns.

The truly fun parts of the book were exploring the many beta features of Google that I didn’t even know existed. For whatever reason, I missed the boat about Google’s shopping comparison service, Froogle (http://froogle.google.com).

I had previously used shopping.com, but found Froogle’s results to be just as accurate and its presentation preferable.

On a high-speed connection, it was much more convenient to have a greater number of listings displayed per page with Froogle. Some of the other shopping services make you wade through multiple advertising-laden screens to reach the desired result. You can also use special “operators” in the search field to limit results to a particular online store.

Eyes widen

“I’ve watched people’s eyes widen over Froogle,” Hill said via e-mail. “People are also amazed to learn that Google serves as an easy phone book, reverse phone book, glossary and stock look-up É I’ll just say that if there’s anyone out there not yet using the Google Toolbar, they are in for a revolutionary experience.”

I had also never heard of Google Catalogs. Located at http://catalogs.google.coms, it is a huge repository of print catalogs from a vast array of merchants that have been converted into an online format. Amazingly, a search can be performed on every single word in a catalog, which makes finding a particular item a breeze since matches are highlighted in yellow. Updates appear rather spotty on this feature, however. For example, some catalogs were up to date, while others hadn’t been updated since 2001.

The consumer vs. professional user dichotomy of these various chapters I’ve highlighted is part of the book’s strength. Since even professional users probably access Google for purely consumer-type search missions including both keeps the book from becoming dry and also makes the purchase of the single book easier to rationalize.

If you’re a heavy Google user, finding a few tips that will increase the accuracy of searches will save time that could really add up over hundreds of uses. It’s a fun and information-packed read, and I can’t imagine anyone not finding a few tips they can immediately put to use.

Hill enjoys the sociological implications of Google as much as the technological ones involved in making it work.

“Google is a sociological wonder, having inculcated itself into the language and mainstream brand awareness to an astonishing extent,” he said. “Google’s impact is only partially expressed at this point, with the business services starting to ripple through online culture as powerfully as the consumer service does.”