I am preparing for several presentations at the Computers in Libraries conference. In the process, I've discovered some Google resources that don't get much air play. If, like most people, your default search engine begins with G and ends with E, check these tools out.

Simply Google
This is a great site for surfacing all of Google's features and sites, downloads, and blogs -- both official and unofficial. One column lists all the sites within Google, everything from setting up alerts to the Google Zeitgeist. The next column has search boxes that streamline all the Google search filters, including blogs, stock prices, patents and public source code. As a tip o' the hat to other search engines, there are also basic search boxes for Yahoo, MSN, Ask and several other web search tools. Also included are links to the official Google blog as well as over 20 other reputable blogs that focus on Google.

GooFresh
This cool little API, developed by web guru Tara Calishain, lets you limit a Google search to sites recently added or updated in the Google index. It's particularly useful if you run the same search every week or month to retrieve new information. As with all of Tara's search tools, it's simple, elegant and useful.

SearchMash
This is an unbranded Google site, where Google is trying out a new search engine interface. For starters, it sorts the results by web pages, images, blogs, videos, and Wikipedia entries, all on one screen. The first 20 web pages are displayed in a somewhat abbreviated format, but with a new way to drill down into any of the retrieved web sites. And Google finally has something close to MSN Live's "infinite scroll." When you click SearchMash's link for "More web results", the next 20 results are added at the end of the search results list; you can now scroll through 40 results at a time. Click "More web results" and another 20 are added at the end of the list, and so on.

Google's Topic Search
Google has been noodling around with its Co-Op tool since it was first rolled out in May of 2006. It is now being promoted as a way to build a customized search engine (see my December 2006 Info-Entrepreneur Tip for a review of client-based search engines. Now, though, Google is also highlighting the cooperatively-built search topics on health, travel destinations, cars, gaming, photography and A-V equipment. Click one of its topic searches and run a search. Above the usual Google search results are categories that help you narrow and focus your search. For example, a search in the health topic lets you focus on sites that provide information on treatment, symptoms, prognosis, clinical trials, support groups and so on. Information professionals and experts in the field contribute to the categorization of specific web pages; this combination of a search engine and a human-built directory is an encouraging move toward making search engines smarter and more relevant.