Google__ The Missing Manual - Kevin Purdy [65]
Whatever you searched for becomes a saved search, which means you can run a new search on that same phrase by clicking it on the left side of your Home page, where it appears below the list of your circles. (The little magnifying glass icon makes it clear that it’s a search term, not a circle.) To delete a saved search, simply mouse over the term, and an X will appear that you can click to delete the search.
Note that any of the modifiers you used in your search (like quotation marks) are kept intact in a saved search. And just like with a regular search, you can filter the results to see just people’s names, Google+ posts, or sparks, and sort by either the best matches or the most recent stuff.
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Google+ makes saving searches convenient, but you can keep more direct tabs on topics in Google+ and access them without needing to have Google+ open in your browser or be signed into your Google account, using either of these browser tricks:
Bookmark the link for a saved search by clicking the saved search on your Google+ Home page and then dragging it to your bookmark toolbar. Alternately, you can run the search, and then either copy the link in your browser’s address bar, or click the + icon at the left end of your browser’s address bar and drag the link from the bar onto your desktop or another convenient location.
Open a saved search in a new browser tab by holding the Ctrl key (the ⌘ key on a Mac) while clicking the search’s link, or by right-clicking the search’s link and choosing “Open link in new tab” (or something similar). Keep the results fresh by changing the sorting to “Most recent,” or by checking in occasionally and clicking the “X more recent post(s)” link.
“What’s Hot” Searches and Ripples
Just above your list of saved searches is a “What’s hot” link with a little flame icon next to it. Click this link to see the Google+ posts that are currently getting the most +1s, comments, and shares per minute out of all the content on Google+. Most (if not all) of the posts will be by folks you don’t know, but you might still find some of them interesting. Running a “What’s hot” search isn’t terribly useful, but it can be a good way to kill some time. If nothing else, you’ll probably see many different kinds of posts that you wouldn’t normally see in your stream—for better or for worse.
If you’re curious how a post got popular enough to make the “What’s Hot” list, click the down arrow in the upper-right corner of the post (circled in the previous illustration), and choose the View Ripples option. This option appears only on public posts that have gained significant popularity. Your own public posts, or posts you share, may even end up with a View Ripples option, if they become popular enough. When you select this option, you’ll see a spiffy diagram that shows who shared the post with whom.
Throw Your Post into the Mix with Hashtags
GOOGLE’S GOOD AT SEARCHING, and as you’ve seen, Google+ includes some powerful search tools. But you and Google don’t have to do all the heavy lifting. In some cases, people will categorize what they post and make it easy to find using a tool that originated on Twitter: hashtags.
Hashtags are a word or phrase preceded by the pound sign (#). (In British vernacular and in computer parlance, that symbol is called a “hash.”) By adding a # in front of a word (#SuperBowl, perhaps, or #election2012), Twitter users organize their short updates. Because few people would otherwise write something like “#winning” as part of a message, anybody searching for “#winning” only finds messages where the author intentionally added that hashtag, not every post where someone happened to use the word “winning.” So hashtags are a simple way for searchers find messages about a certain topic. They can also give context to otherwise inscrutable posts (“Nice shot Brazil! #worldcup”). Hashtags can even serve as punchlines or indicate that there’s some irony at play: “Woke up at 11, ate