Tech Tip: What is Google Up To?

Ever wonder what Google is going to do next? Take a look at Google's robots.txt file. It lists the domains that Google want to exclude from its searches.

Garrett Rogers does this all the time in his Googling Google blog ( http://blogs.zdnet.com/Google/ ). He looks for new domains it it and then goes to those domains to see what Google is working on but has not announced yet. His latest blog entry ( http://blogs.zdnet.com/Google/?p=422 ) discusses Google Reviews ( http://www.google.com/reviews/search? ) Search. It looks like it gathers up your reviews you made using Google Base ( http://www.google/base/ ). You can get to the robots.txt file via this URL: http://www.google.com/robots.txt.

Here is the most recent file:

User-agent: *
Allow: /searchhistory/
Disallow: /news?output=xhtml&
Allow: /news?output=xhtml
Disallow: /search
Disallow: /groups
Disallow: /images
Disallow: /catalogs
Disallow: /catalogues
Disallow: /news
Disallow: /nwshp
Disallow: /?
Disallow: /addurl/image?
Disallow: /pagead/
Disallow: /relpage/
Disallow: /relcontent
Disallow: /sorry/
Disallow: /imgres
Disallow: /keyword/
Disallow: /u/
Disallow: /univ/
Disallow: /cobrand
Disallow: /custom
Disallow: /advanced_group_search
Disallow: /advanced_search
Disallow: /googlesite
Disallow: /preferences
Disallow: /setprefs
Disallow: /swr
Disallow: /url
Disallow: /m?
Disallow: /m/search?
Disallow: /wml?
Disallow: /wml/search?
Disallow: /xhtml?
Disallow: /xhtml/search?
Disallow: /xml?
Disallow: /imode?
Disallow: /imode/search?
Disallow: /jsky?
Disallow: /jsky/search?
Disallow: /pda?
Disallow: /pda/search?
Disallow: /sprint_xhtml
Disallow: /sprint_wml
Disallow: /pqa
Disallow: /palm
Disallow: /gwt/
Disallow: /purchases
Disallow: /hws
Disallow: /bsd?
Disallow: /linux?
Disallow: /mac?
Disallow: /microsoft?
Disallow: /unclesam?
Disallow: /answers/search?q=
Disallow: /local?
Disallow: /local_url
Disallow: /froogle?
Disallow: /froogle_
Disallow: /print
Disallow: /books
Disallow: /patents?
Disallow: /scholar?
Disallow: /complete
Disallow: /sponsoredlinks
Disallow: /videosearch?
Disallow: /videopreview?
Disallow: /videoprograminfo?
Disallow: /maps?
Disallow: /translate?
Disallow: /ie?
Disallow: /sms/demo?
Disallow: /katrina?
Disallow: /blogsearch?
Disallow: /blogsearch/
Disallow: /blogsearch_feeds
Disallow: /advanced_blog_search
Disallow: /reader/
Disallow: /uds/
Disallow: /chart?
Disallow: /transit?
Disallow: /mbd?
Disallow: /extern_js/
Disallow: /calendar/feeds/
Disallow: /calendar/ical/
Disallow: /cl2/feeds/
Disallow: /cl2/ical/
Disallow: /coop/directory
Disallow: /coop/manage
Disallow: /trends?
Disallow: /trends/music?
Disallow: /notebook/search?
Disallow: /music
Disallow: /browsersync
Disallow: /call
Disallow: /archivesearch?
Disallow: /archivesearch/url
Disallow: /archivesearch/advanced_search
Disallow: /base/search?
Disallow: /base/reportbadoffer
Disallow: /base/s2
Disallow: /urchin_test/
Disallow: /movies?
Disallow: /codesearch?
Disallow: /codesearch/feeds/search?
Disallow: /wapsearch?
Disallow: /safebrowsing
Disallow: /finance
Disallow: /reviews/search?

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