Google is normally uber-secretive about the size of its search indexes, but the official Google blog did drop a fascinating hint this week: Google is now indexing more than one trillion unique URLs. Of course, that makes the core database the company stores even larger:

This graph of one trillion URLs is similar to a map made up of one trillion intersections. So multiple times every day, we do the computational equivalent of fully exploring every intersection of every road in the United States. Except it'd be a map about 50,000 times as big as the U.S., with 50,000 times as many roads and intersections.

All of which is good reason to be grateful that Google's doing it, so you don't have to. [The Official Google Blog]

It's been years since we looked at a print edition of the Yellow Pages, but even the online version of the venerable business directory doesn't often attract our attention. Now the whole project has become more useful for a very simple reason: Sensis (the Telstra division that produces the Yellow Pages) has finally allowed Google's robots to index Yellow Pages content, meaning that everyone's favourite search engine now has access to Australian businesses which might otherwise never appear in online results. (The fact that it was ever blocked is frankly one of the weirdest Internet strategies imaginable, but that's another story.)
We're a tad sceptical that being in a Yellow Pages listing will result in businesses getting more visibility in Google search results, as Sensis claims (based on its existing high traffic). Nonetheless, knowing that non-tech-savvy businesses will now appear in search results is very useful. (Note: Existing Telstra mobile customers might want to stick with the Yellow site when on the road, if only because it's free to access on many Next G plans.)

Wired's How-To Wiki details how to flex your Google-fu to get Craigslist results from every Craigslist domain. In essence, the author does a Google site search of Craigslist.org and excludes pages with the word 'directory' to eliminate directory listings of names and phone numbers. The resulting query looks like:

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Microsoft will begun pushing out version 4.0 of Windows Search, the OS-wide indexing system for Vista and XP users, via Windows Update in late July. If you're keen to get the new version before it hits Windows Update, which claims improved performance (especially on indexing of open email inboxes), you can grab a copy here. However, there's two potential challenges: it'll need to rebuild your whole index, which might cause system problems (though Microsoft claims any foreground activity will pause the indexing); and it won't happen until you reboot. If you've been there, done that and found Windows Search 4.0 a boon or a bore, let us know in the comments.
Reminder - Windows Search 4 coming to WU soon... [Microsoft Product Update Team Blog]

YouTorrent, the BitTorrent search aggregator with a great interface that proved too popular to stay online with a, er, laissez-faire attitude about legality, has re-launched as a meta-search for legal downloads. Grabbing results of verified legal or open-licensed downloads from Jamendo, BitTorrent, Mininova, and others, the site moves as quickly as ever, lets you sort results by relevance, date, or feed statistics, and offers previews of audio files through the Bitlet streaming tool. It's not quite the hyper-organized bazaar of torrents it once was, but if you're looking for something that might be genuinely free to grab, YouTorrent seems like a great place to start.

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Web site Speckly is a barebones BitTorrent search engine that scours multiple popular torrent trackers and returns the results in a simple interface. In fact, you'll notice the site's design is a direct knock off of Google, but it has a few subtle tweaks for BitTorrent. Like previously mentioned torrent aggregator PizzaTorrent, Speckly also allows you to sort results by file type, and according to weblog Mashable, the ad-free site will remain ad-free—an accomplishment for the often pop-up-ridden world of BitTorrent trackers. If you need more robust filtering, we'd recommend PizzaTorrent, but if simplicity is what you're looking for, Speckly looks like a winner.

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We're pretty dedicated users of the email-based Google Alerts at Lifehacker HQ, but certain search terms have just far too many results to not turn into a kind of voluntary spam. FeedMySearch, a free Google-tweaking utility, turns new results from Google's many search areas—web, news, blogs, images, and more—into an RSS feed you can incorporate however you'd like. Some of these results, like Google News, have RSS feeds built in, but FeedMySearch's web search feeds are full-fledged with embedded video and pictures, and the site makes it easy to embed the feeds in your favourite start pages or bookmarking tools. FeedMySearch is free to use, no sign-up required.

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Need an image with dark blue and green undertones for desktop wallpaper or a design project? Multicolr Search Lab, a free search utility, digs through roughly 3 million images in Flickr's "Interesting" set for photos featuring the colours you select. You can make one colour more prominent by selecting it multiple times, and the results seem pretty genuine—my only complaint is that you have to find the colours with your eyes, and can't put in hexadecimal or RGB values grabbed from graphics programs. The colour search engine also has a front end for Alamy Stock Photography for those in need of definite royalty-free images.

Web search engine Searchme displays search results using the three-dimensional Cover Flow interface you've come to know and love in iTunes and on your iPod for web pages. Searchme also guesses related categories for popular searches. For example, a search for "new york" might be related to baseball or business news, restaurant information, and architecture, and Searchme will give you search results within the selected category. Searchme performs optimally within category searches; keyword searches alone don't seem to yield the most relevant pages—for example, Lifehacker.com is nowhere near the top of the results for a search for "Lifehacker." Still, if you prefer to view screenshots of pages before you actually visit the page and don't use the Lifehacker-endorsed BetterSearch Firefox extension, the Cover Flow display grouped with search results might prove to be a valuable asset.

Firefox only (Windows/Mac/Linux): The CyberSearch Firefox extension transforms Firefox 3's AwesomeBar into a dynamic search box capable of returning results from popular sites like Wikipedia, Google, and more. The extension is fully customisable, so you can define keyword shortcuts for just about any search you can think of. For example, you could create a Lifehacker-only Google site search so that typing something like lh gmail in your AwesomeBar would give you the first page of Google results directly in the AwesomeBar. Choosing a result will take you directly that page. Luckily you don't have to create the Lifehacker-only search if you don't want to, as the extension already includes a custom search using the keyword techy that searches only Lifehacker, CyberNet, and Download Squad. Hit the jump for a video of CyberSearch in action.

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