TechBays

No introduction. This is what you’ll see today in our tests:

1. Alternate views for search results
2. Keyword suggestions
3. Keyboard shortcuts
4. Left-hand search navigation
5. Right-hand contextual search navigation

I. Alternate views for search results: List, Timeline, Info, Map

A search on Hillary Clinton for example will show you in classic search what is now called a List View. We are all familiar with this. A full shot is shown below.

Click on function Info View and search will show biographies, wikipedia, official sites, MySpace, YouTube, etc. Full shot is shown below.

The Timeline View looks interesting. It shows a horizon logical to the search in question. A search on Hillary, born in 1947, shows a timeline from 1945 to today. Search on Thomas Jefferson, born in 1743, and result shows a timeline from 1740 to 1820s. You can scroll backward or forward in the timeline view or further focus search by identifying a timeline section.

Full shot of Timeline View is shown below.

The Map View uses Google Map in its search and identifies places related to subject’s biography or news items. Full shot of Map View is shown below.

It looks like Wikipedia is heavily relied on the search results.

II. Keyword Suggestions

This function is similar to Mahalo suggestion or Yahoo suggestion when typing search words in the search box. The difference is that Google gives you a count of results entries as you type.  See examples below.

Search word Hillary.

Further. Search word Hillary Clinton.

III. Keyboard Shortcuts

This function is similar to Google Reader or Gmail shortcuts. Handy habits formed by Google for its users. Consistently good. List is shown below.

IV. Left-Hand Search Navigation

This works like search suggestion but the sub-categories are listed on the left-hand side of the SERP. See shot below.

V. Right-Hand Contextual Search Navigation

Similar to the sub-categories of item IV, this one relates to contextual type of search.  The search drills down to subtypes and then to subtypes of subtypes, until you’re down to detailed result. This one works like an enterprise application.

Let’s simulate searching for the word dancing.

The initial result gives us, on the right-hand side, a list of related, contextual searches. A closer shot below.

Click on history of dancing and new list of related searches are identified. Shown below.

Click on history of ballet gives you another round of related searches.

We’ll stop drilling down from here. It is likely that if you click on history of jazz dance that other subtypes will appear.  This is relational data and is a hint of semantic type of search.

Good job Google! The tests don’t distract your usual Google search experience.

However, this is still in experimental mode. If you like to test it yourself, go to Google Labs: Experimental search.

[source: The Official Google Blog]

Related:

Who gives better search results?