Bogdan Pop : Web development , Photography , Dj

Ok, 2 days ago, Andrew Hogue posted on Google Blog some new ways to search. The engine of searching hasn’t changed at all, however, the way results are displayed has changed big time. You can get to see exactly what I am talking about in Google’s experimental page.

These experimental views of the results have been introduced in May, but they have been updated recently. Now, you can view the results as a map, which is quite a handy feature, I think, and Hogue brags about it in his post:

“Suppose you’re scouring the web trying to find out about math conferences happening in your state. Or you’d like to sit back and enjoy some jazz around town. This information is on the web and accessible through regular web search, but probably spread out over many sites and pages. Unless one of these pages has a map, it might be hard to visualize all the locations at once. Map view solves this problem by plotting some of the key locations contained in your web results onto a map.”

But the most interesting fact I’ve seen is the next one. You can zoom and move across the map, than click update results, and then you get relevant results according to the selected area of the map you are viewing at that moment. One word: Interesting. More words: Hard to use. I tried this feature myself for the past few minutes, and I couldn’t find anything I wanted. So I think this kind of search is best suited only if you are in the US and looking for large companies, government institutions which have their offices on the map. Then you can really say this search feature is great.

I searched for hosting visualizing the intire US map, and I couldn’t find any of the DC guru’s. So for the time being, I think I’ll skip map view of the results.

Now, the timeline search. Hogue says:

“Timeline view does the same thing as map view, but for dates found on the web. This includes dates of upcoming or historic events, or even biographical information — all generated automatically from your search results.”

Ok, his search went well, great in fact. But how about mine? My god, no results at the time of this post. Aren’t there no hosting conferences around the last years and in the forthcoming months? Oh boy. We are doomed. Or perhaps not, and Google’s timeline view doesn’t work that well either.

Stick to their experimental page to check out new features, because some of them could come in handy. The ones above are new, and don’t quite work yet, but I trust that Google will improve them. I mean, their classic search is a charm, why wouldn’t these new features be like that too.

Cheers!