GGSearch

Anyone who's spent much time downloading software knows that search tools--bars, boxes, enhancers, filters, whatever--are among the most ubiquitous freeware on the Internet, and they vary widely in usefulness. GGSearch is a Google-based search tool that's actually useful in a lot of ways. It lets you quickly filter searches for everything from the whole Web to blogs, pictures, Linux, maps, stocks, Webquotes, and YouTube. It offers a plethora of options, including the ability to translate results into and from dozens of languages. GGSearch uses Google's search engine and some other Google components, but it's not affiliated with Google.

GGSearch opens as a small floating dialog that expands to a narrow toolbar spanning the desktop when maximized. It's a simple layout, just a search entry field, a drop-down menu to filter searches by relevance, and a Search button. We entered a search string and clicked Search, using the default filter that searches everything. The results opened in a Google window in our default browser. Next we set the filter to search only blogs and entered a search. GGSearch quickly returned results combed only from the blogoverse, which contains tons of useful but hard-to-find information and resources. Hovering the cursor over the bottom of the interface called up access to the program's extensive settings and options, which we were also able to access from the program's system tray icon. These options include search tool settings, styles, themes, languages, transparency, startup and operating behavior, and import and export settings. You can set GGSearch to search in 27 languages and display results in 66 languages, and even use it to translate Web pages. Options entries are clearly labeled yet also sport colorful icons, a useful touch in a program with such multilingual, multinational appeal.

Google's open-source code makes useful tools like GGSearch possible. We've tried lots of search tools and found few keepers, but it looks like our search is over.