Glossary S

Spear Phishing is a sophisticated form of Internet attack where a user is sent out a customized email message that entices them to visit a poisoned website.

Sidewiki is a commenting system for the entire Web. It is potentially on any page and visible as a sidebar you can reveal or hide as you browse. These comments are ranked by algorithm as they're posted. Furthermore, it takes comments on one page and includes those same comments on pages that quote from the original.

Sherpa is an Android app provided by T-Mobile for myTouch 3G and G1 phones.

Searchology is a periodic Google press event where they announce big changes and new features for Google search.

Semantic search is the ability of a search engine to determine what you mean when you search for something rather than merely matching keywords for your query.

ShopSavvy is an application for Android-powered mobile phones. This program turns uses the camera on your cell phone to scan the bar code from items. It then comparison shops for the lowest local and online price for that item, shows you reviews for the item, and gives you driving directions to find stores selling the item.

SearchWiki is an element of the Google Web search interface that was introduced in November of 2009. It allows logged-in users to raise or lower search result rankings and make comments about results.

Seth MacFarlane’s Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy is a series of short animations featuring Google AdSense advertising.

Google Sites is a wiki and collaboration tool formerly known as JotSpot. As of this writing, it is only available for Google Apps users.

Google Sky is a feature of Google Earth. You can use this to view a map of the stars in the night sky. Sky is activated by clicking on the Sky button on the top of the Google Earth application window.

SafeSearch is a Google setting which filters out adult content from Web and Image search results. The default filter level is set to moderate filtering.

Google Scholar is a search engine for peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, abstracts, and other scholarly literature from all broad areas of research.

Google Search History is part of Personalized Home Page. This allows you to view and manage your past searches and access them from more than one computer. You can also save search results as a bookmark.

SearchMash is Google's experimental search interface. It does not have Google branding.

SEO stands for search engine optimization. This refers to the creation and maintenance of Web pages that are easily indexed by search engines. Well optimized pages should rank higher in search results.

SERP stands for Search Engine Results Page. This is the page that Google returns when you search for a key phrase. This term is commonly used in search engine optimization.

Google Sets tries to predict items missing from a set when you enter a few examples. An example would be entering “square, circle, rectangle, octagon” Google Sets tries to complete the set with “line, oval, polygon, elipse” and so on. Google Sets is currently in Google Labs.

Google Sitemaps allows web designers to create a sitemap file, which allows their site to be more easily cataloged in Google web searches. Google Sitemaps is currently a beta project.

Google SketchUp is desktop software that runs on Macintosh, Windows, and Linux machines. You can use it to create 3D shapes that can easily be imported into Google Earth. Google offers both a free and a Pro version of SketchUp.

This is how you text search queries to Google on phones that don't get Internet.

Google web searches can be narrowed to specific fields, such as US Government, Linux, Apple Macintosh, and Microsoft.

Google Spreadsheets is a Google Labs project that allows you to create, edit, and share spreadsheets. The web-based program also allows you to import Excel spreadsheets from your desktop or download an export them.

Google Suggest is a Google Labs project that attempts to complete the word as you type in order to suggest keywords.

Google traditionally used the name "Sponsored Links" to refer to Adword Ads. Recently the preferred name seems to be simply ads.

What does Google's search changes mean for you?