gHacks technology news » search engine

Google Rolls Out New Search Interface

Martin — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:39:16 +0000

A recent post over at Search Engine Land suggests that Google will be rolling out a new search interface – or more precisely search result page design – to selected users later today. The effort seems to have originated in the analysis of the current search results layout which is everything but coherent and has been a major point of criticism lately.

The new search results layout will use a cleaner design with an additional left sidebar. The left sidebar will always be visible and seems to have originated from the advanced search options which currently have to be expanded to make them visible. The sidebar will make use of colorful icons for permanent listings at the top and a dynamic lower part that display contents depending on the choices the user made. A selection of video for instance will display filters for playtime, date of publication or quality while the selection of images will display image related filters.

The default entry point for most searches is Everything which will display the standard mixed search engine results. The Google search engine will guess the most appropriate mode, a search for Mercedes videos will therefor display the video mode as the default entry point again with the option to switch to another mode.

It is likely that Google will roll out this new search interface to all users eventually. What’s your opinion on the matter? It will likely be another difficulty change for Google users who lately had to endure the new Google homepage design with the fading links.

Tags: Google, google search, google search results, search engine

Google Image Swirl

Martin — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 15:15:00 +0000

Google Image search is a very comprehensive search engine to find photos and all kinds of images that have been posted publicly on the Internet. It does offer a few sorting and filtering options and can even find related images to one of the selected images on the results pages. Google Image Swirl takes this concept a step further by solely concentrating on the related images concept. It is currently an experimental service over at Google Labs.

Google Image Swirl starts of like any other Google Image search. The user enters a search phrase in the search form on the page. The script will then display possible matches for that entered search phrase. So far so identical to the standard Google Image search engine.

Differences begin to appear after the selection of one of the results.

Google Image Swirl will display the image and related images in the same interface instead of loading the website that is containing the image. Related images are placed around the selected image with lines showing their relation. Even better is the fact that second tier relations are shown as well on the page. A click on the central image will load that image in the website that is was published on.

It is however also possible to click on one of the related images to navigate further into that path. This can be a very interesting way of exploring images about a specific subject. Google Image Swirl is an experimental service that is open to all users over at Google Labs.

Tags: Google, google image, google image swirl, google images, image search, search engine

Bing Videos And Bing Search Get Updates As Well

Martin — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 19:15:26 +0000

Microsoft this time seems to be dead serious to compete at all levels with the seemingly almighty guys at Google and especially their search engine. Several key services over at Bing were updated today including the already reviewed Bing Maps service. But Bing Maps was but one service that got updated. Microsoft has also updated Bing Search and Bing Videos to make the services more appealing and useful to web users.

Bing Videos for one got a new interface making use of a sidebar navigation for a better and faster browsing experience. Other improvements to the interface include the option to dim the surroundings when a video is played to be able to better focus on the video. New content providers have been and will be added to Bing Videos making the service a very comprehensive source for videos and tv shows from all over the web.

Most of the US tv shows can only by viewed by US users on the other hand which puts a dent to the service for users from outside the US. Read the announcement here for additional information.

Today was also the beginning of the next chapter of Bing Search with improvements to travel, weather and shopping options. One of the interesting options is a search for events in US cities. The search term city events will lead to a standard Bing search results page with the difference that the first result will list events in that city and link to a bigger event listing in case that short listing is not enough.

Other additions include “better results for health conditions, medications, and even hospitals”, search sharing with friends at Facebook and Twitter or better help to plan and book travel. Most of these additions seem to be targeted at US visitors at the moment with the likelihood that they will eventually become available for visitors from other countries as well.

Tags: bing, bing events, bing health, bing search, bing travel, bing videos, search engine

Bing Maps Gets An Update

Martin — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 16:16:43 +0000

Bing Maps has been updated today with several new features and a new look and feel. Most notably in this regard are a new button bar with each button loading a specific feature of Bing Maps. Microsoft has also added some new colors to Bing Maps but those are only the obvious changes to the interface. Among the new features are the option to embed Bing maps into websites allowing website owners or those with posting rights (for example on forums) to post maps that can be customized by location, size and map style.

The performance of Bing Maps was improved in several ways. Microsoft is now serving maps from seven different locations in the world making it faster for the user to access the information requested. The default Bing Maps homepage has seen a size reduction as well from nearly 700 Kilobytes to less than 500 Kilobytes which should be noticeably by and beneficial to low bandwidth connections.

The full list of changes includes:

Draggable Routes – Yes! This is a great (and much requested) feature added to Bing Maps allowing you to generate a route, then in the case that you need to change the route, you can simply grab any part of it and drag it to where you want the route to actually go. To use draggable routes, click the directions link in the welcome pane or the car icon near the bottom of the welcome pane. Enter a start and end, generate a route, then grab anywhere on the route to move the route line. The route will regenerate for you.
Zoom Bar – No longer just a zoom in and zoom out button, the zoom bar allows you to jump to specific zoom levels within predefined settings.
Command Parsing – Want driving directions? Enter “Bellevue, WA to Space Needle” in the Bing Maps search box. Want traffic info? Enter “Seattle Traffic” in the Bing Maps search box.
Embed a Map – You can now take a map view right from Bing Maps and embed it into your site. To do this, you’ll want to click the Share button once your map is where you want it to be. You can copy the embed code from there; or, you can click the Customize View link which will take you to the embeddable map customizer (EMC). The EMC allows you to set a map to the map height and width (small, medium, large or custom); the map type (static or draggable); the map styles (road, aerial, aerial w/ labels); and, add links to Bing Maps for Viewing a Larger Map or Getting Directions. Once you’ve set everything the way you want it, click Generate Code and boom! there’s your code. You copy it, then paste it into your web page and you’ll have the map you wanted.
Dynamic Compute – We’ve moved the processing power closer to the user. Using Microsoft’s ECN, we now have Bing Maps running in data centers in 7 locations around the world. This means wherever you are around the world, you will access Bing Maps from the closest geographic node to where you are physically located.
New Navigation – We also added a subset of features to a button bar along the bottom of the welcome pane. Each button loads features on Bing Maps. Welcome loads the welcome pane; the car loads the route planner; the star loads My Places, formerly called Collections; the envelop loads the ability to share the map with someone via email, copying a URI or embedding the map into a web page (more on that below); the printer icon is for printing; and, stoplight will load a traffic overlay with flow and incident information.
World Wrap – no longer will your Bing Maps experience stop at the international date line. Keep going around, and around, and around…
Diet Bing Maps – The default Bing Maps home page dropped from 678kb to 484kb. It zips through the pipes much faster now.

Bing Maps is a service over at Microsoft’s Bing search engine.

Tags: bing, bing maps, maps, microsoft, search engine

Get Ready For Caffeinated Google Search

Martin — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 17:41:27 +0000

Google set up a search sandbox a while ago showcasing and testing their new search algorithm. The public display served not only to show the world that Google was ready to take on the challenges by new search engines like Microsoft’s Bing but also as a testing ground for webmasters who were encouraged to compare results and let Google know about them.

Many search engine users liked the sandbox search as it was faster and with no noise in the form of advertisement and additional search results that Google likes to add to their normal search engine include results from Google News, Youtube, Google Images or Google Maps.

Users who wanted to load the sandboxed search engine today were greeted with the following text:

Thanks You! We appreciate all the feedback from people who searched on our Caffeine sandbox.

Based on the success we’ve seen, we believe Caffeine is ready for a larger audience. Soon we will activate Caffeine more widely, beginning with one data center. This sandbox is no longer necessary and has been retired, but we appreciate the testing and positive input that webmasters and publishers have given.

So one Google data center is already serving the search results based on the new search algorithm while the large majority is still serving the old. Many users who compared search results between the old and new search engine were not able to find any serious differences. Those that did believed that the search results were better targeted to the search phrase of the user. Google on the other hand seems to be convinced that the caffeinated search algorithm is the better one. Time will tell if that is true.

Tags: Google, google sandbox, google search, search algorithm, search engine

Google Images Downloader

Martin — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 10:47:07 +0000

Google Images is part of the Google search engine. It can be used to only search for images in the Google search engine with options to filter the search results. It is for example possible to define a minimum image resolution, image type or color. Images that are displayed in the search engine cannot be downloaded directly in their real size. The search engine user needs to visit the website the image was posted on to do that.

The Google Images Downloader solves that problem by providing the means to download multiple images from Google Images directly. The portable software program is available for the Windows operating system. The user can either copy and paste a Google Image search url into the application or grab the url from the active page in the program directly.

It is then possible to grab the image links from Google Images. The program will grab results from the first five pages by default; A figure that can be changed in the interface directly. Other filters include the allowed image formats and to block html files. All images will then be downloaded to the directory that the user specified in the interface. It takes only a few seconds – depending on the Internet connection of course – to download dozens of images from Google Images.

Multi Image Downloader can be downloaded from Freeware Files. The program is compatible with Windows XP and Windows Vista (and likely Windows 7 as well).

Tags: google images, google images downloader, portable software, search engine, windows software

Search, Play And Download Music With Songr

Martin — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 16:16:26 +0000

Legal mp3 search engines search the Internet for mp3 files that they can legally provide to their users. These are mp3 that are provided as samples by record labels and artists, free mp3 released under a license like Creative Commons or other audio files that can be freely distributed.

Songr is a Windows application that will search ten mp3 search engines for music that the user is looking for. Among the mp3 search engines that are supported are playlist.com, Skreemr or Mp3realm. It will also search Youtube indirectly by utilizing the Justhearit service. The developers plan to add nine mp3 search engines (including Groveshark) to the program to increase the quality and quantity of search results.

A search is performed by entering an album, artist or song name in the search form in the main interface. Songr will then search the various mp3 search engines and return the combined results of that search. The name, duration, bitrate, size, search engine and relevancy are shown in the search results. These information are not always displayed which means that they are only supported by some of the search engines.

A right click on a row in the search results opens a context menu with options to play or download the selected song. Another interesting option of Songr is the search by lyrics feature. The program tries to identify a few words that are entered and displays possible artists and songs which can then be searched for with a double-click.

Songr requires the Microsoft .net Framework 3.5 and is compatible with Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7. It can be downloaded from the developer’s website.

Tags: download-mp3, mp3-search, search engine, song, windows software

Google Plans More Changes To Google Search

Martin — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 19:26:56 +0000

Google’s latest change to their search engine homepage was not welcome by all users. The increase of the font size was a shock to many who used to work with the same search engine page for the past years. Some users even got as far as claiming that they would move to another search engine if Google would not undo the changes. Soon userscripts and Firefox extensions were created that would bring the font size back to its old size.

Users who have been in shock then might want to stop reading at this point because it could get worse. Techcrunch was the first to write an article about Google’s new experimental homepage which only displays the Google logo and the search form on the page initially. No buttons, no other links.

Those links only become visible if a user moves the mouse in the window. Take a look at the video to see how the new Google search page could look like in the future:

Users with eagle eyes notice that there is no Search button at the end of the form and no I’m feeling lucky button either. It somehow does make sense from a usability standpoint. Many users simply type in the search query and hit enter on the keyboard to perform the search. Since they do not move the mouse at all for this operation they do not need the links on that page. Everyone moving the mouse might want to click on the links or use the mouse to perform the search.

It still could be very confusing for users and it is very likely that many will call tech support to ask if something is broken. You can also visit the custom search page if you want a barebones search interface.

Tags: Google, google custom search, google search, search engine

Perform Plain Google Searches Without Video, Image And News Results

Martin — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 15:23:27 +0000

If you perform a Google search nowadays you get mixed search results. Google not only displays the first ten pages that is has in its index for the entered keyword but also image, video and news results. Sometimes ads are also added to the search results and placed on top of everything else.

Some search engine users might want a cleaner search results list without the additional search results that are offered by Google. The Digital Inspiration blog found an interesting alternative url to perform clean Google searches without video, image and news results.

Users who want nothing but the plain top 10 search engine results for a specific keyword can point their web browsers to http://www.google.com/custom to perform a custom search without the additional search results and advertisements that are added to the default Google search.

Google default search:

Google custom search:

It is also possible to add the custom Google search engine to the list of search provides. How this is done depends on the web browser that is being used. A quick overview of how this can be done can be found in the article about Google’s Sandbox search engine here at Ghacks.

Tags: Google, google custom search, google search, search engine

Google Search New Custom Search Options Added

Martin — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 11:11:56 +0000

One of the latest trends in the search engine market seem to be custom search options, search filters and specialized search parameters. Google has introduced the search options in the main Google search engine a while ago. These were made up of advanced search parameters which have been accessible before (before starting search) and new filters. A click on the Show Options link on a search results page will open the available options in a sidebar.

Google has added new custom search options yesterday which are now accessible in Google Search. The following four options have been added to Google Search:

Past hour and Specific date range: With these tools you can choose to see only the most recent results in our index, or see results from a specific time period. This can be particularly helpful when you’re looking for the freshest information, or if you have some idea of when the information you’re looking for may have been published to the web.
More shopping sites and Fewer shopping sites: Now you can choose “More shopping sites” to show additional commercial pages and display prices from those pages right in the search results. If you’re doing product research and are not quite ready to make a purchase, you can choose to see “Fewer shopping sites” to filter out many of the commercial sites.
Visited pages and Not yet visited: Rediscover pages you’ve visited before by clicking “Visited pages,” or filter out the websites you’ve seen by clicking “Not yet visited.” This can be particularly helpful when you’re researching something you’ve already explored and you want to return right where you left off. To use this option you’ll need to be signed in to your Google Account and have Web History enabled.
Books, Blogs and News: Click on these filters to see results only from these sources. Putting these filters together, along with videos, forums, and reviews, allows you to quickly switch between different source types right on the search results page.

The past hour and specific date range parameter was accessible through url parameters before only. The inclusion in the search options makes it easier to use this parameter. Search engine users can now increase or decrease the amount of shopping sites that are displayed in the Google search results which can be very handy depending on the type of search performed.

Visited pages and not yet visited is only available for users who are logged into their Google account and have web history enabled. This can be interesting to continue a search at a later time without having to revisit pages that have been visited before. Books, blogs and news finally allows to refine search to only see results from these sources. They are similar to the previous source filters which allowed search engine users to only display results from sources that were videos, forums or reviews.

It would be interesting if Google would reveal statistics about these custom search options to see how many search engine users make use of them. Which leads to this question: Have you used the custom search options?

Tags: custom search, Google, google search, search engine, search options

Bing & Ping Preview

Martin — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 11:07:35 +0000

The Microsoft Bing development team is trying to distinguish their search engine from Google by adding new features to their search engine. The latest feature that the team is developing goes by the name Bing & Ping. It has been designed to offer Bing users better options to share search results. This feature resembles the “social” buttons that are displayed on blogs and other websites. Bing & Ping integrates Facebook, Twitter plus email and copy options in the Bing search engine.

Only specific results, called Bing’s Instant Answers, can be shared this way. This includes translations, sport results, weather conditions, financial information and more.

Microsoft is now offering signups for the Bing & Ping preview.

Thanks for your interest in the Bing & Ping preview. If you want to participate in the preview program, please submit your Windows Live ID. If you do not have a Windows Live ID, you can register for one by going to https://signup.live.com. You will receive a reply confirming your acceptance into Bing & Ping via e-mail to the Windows Live ID you provided. The e-mail will provide additional details on the features we’re testing out, including some examples of how to use them.

Users who are interested to test this new feature can sign up at the Bing & Ping Preview page. Users who signup for the preview will receive an email once the service has been activated for them. The email will contain instructions and examples on how to use the service.

Tags: bing, Bing & Ping, facebook, search engine, twitter

Bing Visual Search

Martin — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 22:00:42 +0000

One of the new improvements that Microsoft introduces in their search engine Bing is a Silverlight driven visual search engine. Visual search meaning that pictures will be used to display and navigate the search results instead of text and text links. The benefit is a better search experiment with the limitation that it only works for specific topics and not every search. Microsoft has created roughly 30 different visual search niches in the categories entertainment, famous people, reference, shopping and sports. The shopping category contains the visual search topics cell phones, digital cameras, new cars, handbags and HDTVs.

A click on any topic will open the results in an image grid. The results are automatically sorted. The cell phone results page for instance sorts the different cell phones by brand. Hovering over a cell phone will display a search term in the Bing search box; A click will perform a normal search in Bing for the search term.

Various sorting options are provided in a drop down menu at the top. Cell phones can for example be sorted by Bing popularity or contract price while the movies in theater can be sorted by release date, title, metacritic rating or weekend box office earnings.

The search engine will automatically sort the results without reloading the page. Bing’s visual search can be a comfortable way of exploring specific information. It is handy for Internet users who want to research specific topics like movies that are currently playing in cinema, popular books, top iPhone apps and dog breeds. This is especially a good solution for users who do not know where to look for this information. Internet veterans usually know the websites that they have to open to find the information that they are looking for.

Bing Visual Search (link) is an interesting concept but it is currently limited to a few dozen popular topics, probably to ensure that the quality of the results remains high. It is probably not going to be introduced on a larger scale in the near future.

Update:

Bing Visual Search is only available to visitors who are using the United States version of the search engine (maybe some others but that has not been tested). If another country is shown in the top right corner then a page not found error is displayed. To access visual search users need to change the country to United States.

Tags: bing, bing search, bing visual search, microsoft bing, search engine

Google Real-Time Search

Martin — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 14:19:41 +0000

Google Search offers several options to limit the search results by a selected time frame. One is available in the advanced search parameters which allows users to search only in results that have been published or updated in the last year, month, week, day. The other becomes available in the newly added Search Options on the search results pages. Options there are similar with the addition of the recent time frame which seems to return results from the last 24 hours as well.

None of them can be considered real-time search results. Ran Geva posted an interesting article over at the Omgili blog which described a way to change the search parameters further to come close to real-time search results in Google. The default Google search result urls contain the qdr:x parameter if the results are filtered by time with x being replaced by d for days, we for weeks, m for months and y for years.

All he did was to replace the x value with n for minutes and s for seconds to get results that have been posted in the last 60 minutes or 60 seconds. It is furthermore possible to add a number behind the n or s value to customize the query further. The parameter qdr:n20 would search for results that have been indexed in the last 20 minutes.

The custom search parameter will be displayed as past minute or past second after performing the search and will persist even when conducing new Google searches. Seconds usually do not yield many results (if any at all) while minutes are usually well indexed already.

Steve Rubel acted quickly and created a bookmarklet to display the Google search results that have been indexed in the last ten minutes.

The bookmarklet can be changed easily to search a different time frame. All that needs to be done is to change the qdr=n10 part in the bookmarklet.

Tags: Google, google real-time search, google search, google search bookmarklet, real time, real-time search, search engine

Microsoft Will Upgrade Its Bing Search Engine This Fall

Martin — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 10:08:08 +0000

Microsoft’s introduction of its Bing search engine has revived search engine competition it seems. Bing did receive some praise since its introduction and Google has since then reacted by offering search engine users a preview of their upcoming search engine technologies in the form of the sandboxed search engine Caffeine and a limited test run of Ajax powered search which is delivering search results faster to the user.

Twitter has been full of messages about Microsoft’s coming upgrade of their Bing search engine. Most messages suggest a release this fall with some suspecting a release as early as the coming week. Relatively few information are provided about the changes that Microsoft is introducing in Bing 2.0. Some noteworthy ones are:

Silverlight powered Bing 2.0 on its way this month?: That’s the message coming out of yesterdays annual company

BING 2.0 terrific !! watch out guys ! bing + silverlight in maps = amazing !! goodbye google

It has to be noted that the tweets are coming out of Microsoft’s company meeting which suggest that most original information are provided by Microsoft employees. Microsoft on the other hand did not officially comment on the messages that have been posted.

It is also unknown if the search result quality has been improved as well or if only selected modules of the search engine have been optimized and improved. Guess we have to wait at least another week before we know for sure. What would you like to see in the new version of the search engine?

Tags: bing, bing 2.0, bing update, microsoft, microsoft bing, search engine

Did Google Just Increase The Font Size Of Google Search?

Martin — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 08:05:51 +0000

It is not often that Google changes something on the front-end of Google Search. The only element that the Google developers change regularly is the logo that adds a little bit of change to the search engine every other day or so. Changes to the rest of the front-end on the other hand are rare and it came as a surprise that the font size of the search form has been increased significantly. This has been tested with various web browsers like Firefox, Opera and Internet Explorer which all confirmed the change. We first thought it was caused by a Firefox add-on or Greasemonkey script or related to the Firefox update yesterday but this is apparently not the case.

The font size of the Google search result pages on the other hand do not look like they have been changed as well. The new font size looks and feels alien on first glance which can be attributed to the fact that the font size has not changed in years.

Not everyone might experience the new font size. Reasons for this could be that Google is testing the font size in Google Search and showing it only to some of the search engine visitors. Another reason might be that Google is adjusting the font size based on the visitors screen resolution.

Let us know if you see the larger font size in Google Search as well and what you think of it.

Update: Users who prefer the old font size can install a Greasemonkey script to revert back to the old font size.

Tags: Google, google search, google search font, search engine

Compare Current And Upcoming Google Search Results

Martin — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 11:05:57 +0000

Google is currently giving webmasters and other interested users a sneak peek of their upcoming search algorithm. Interested users can open a sandboxed search engine that is using the new Google search algorithm to test it. Google is mainly offering this new search engine to webmasters to test website rankings but it can also be used by other users as it seems to be faster and with less advertisements in its current stage.

Webmasters who want to compare search engine results can open the old and new Google search engine in two tabs to compare results. A more practicable solution is the use of a tool like Compare Google which displays search results on one page.

Users can enter a search phrase and an optional domain name on the search page. The tool will then display the old and new Google search results next to each other on the same page which makes it easier to identify ranking changes. Domain matches will be displayed in red so that ranking changes for a specific domain name can be identified on first glance.

Compare Google is a free online tool that can help webmasters find differences between Google’s old and new search result ranking algorithm.

Tags: caffeine, compare google, Google, google caffeine, google sandbox, google search, search engine

Add Google Sandbox Search Engine To Web Browsers

Martin — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 08:56:45 +0000

You might have already heard about Google’s new sandbox search engine that is showcasing a new search infrastructure. Google invited webmasters to test the search engine and provide feedback which might indicate that the search engine algorithm is still tweaked. Users on the other hand can enjoy a Google search engine without advertisement and other annoyances that displays results faster and is said to list less spam results on the search engine results pages.

Some users might therefor like to switch to the new Google Search engine. The sandbox search engine can be opened directly by pointing the web browser to this url: http://www2.sandbox.google.com/

The manual approach works nicely but there is also the option to add the Google search engine to the web browser’s search box. The following guide will show how to add the new Google search engine to various web browsers:

Firefox

Firefox users can download the Add To Search Bar extension for Firefox. This add-on makes it super-easy to add new search forms to the search box in the Firefox web browser. All they need to do after installation is to visit the Google Sandbox search engine, right-click it and select Add to Search Bar from the context menu.

Opera

Opera users can right-click the Google search form to add the search engine to the Opera search box. The entry Create Search opens a menu that can be used to add Google Search to the search box. Users need to add a keyword for the search which will then appear as one of the search engines the Opera user can pick from.

Google Chrome

Google Chrome users need to right-click the address bar of the Google browser and select Edit Search Engines once they have opened the sandbox search engine. Google Chrome will automatically detect the new search engine and display it as one of the available search engines. The Google Sandbox search engine can then be added as a default search engine.

Internet Explorer 8

Internet Explorer 8 users need to open the following website in Internet Explorer [link]. The Google Search engine can be added by pasting the url of a TEST search in the Google Sandbox search engine in the URL field on the page and selecting a name for it. A click on Install will open a menu to add the Google Sandbox search engine to Internet Explorer.

Tags: firefox, google chrome, google sandbox, google search, google search engine, internet-explorer, opera, search engine

Test Google’s Next-Generation Search Engine Infrastructure

Martin — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 15:48:06 +0000

Did you know that Google – like many other search engines – changes their search algorithms hundreds of times per year? Search results get tweaked all the time by the developers and it is most of the time behind the scene changes that are not revealed to the outside. Webmasters have learned to live with those changes and are able to spot some of them by observing the search engine rankings of websites. Webmaster forums do occasionally get flooded by webmasters if something drastic happens.

It is not often that a search engine invites users to test it’s search infrastructure. Google invited webmasters yesterday to test out their next-generation search engine infrastructure. Interested users can point their web browsers to http://www2.sandbox.google.com/ to perform a live test.

For the last several months, a large team of Googlers has been working on a secret project: a next-generation architecture for Google’s web search. It’s the first step in a process that will let us push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions. The new infrastructure sits “under the hood” of Google’s search engine, which means that most users won’t notice a difference in search results. But web developers and power searchers might notice a few differences, so we’re opening up a web developer preview to collect feedback.

Webmasters usually have the advantage of being able to check how their websites rank for certain keywords which makes it easier for them to spot differences. Most users who commented in the original post at the Google webmasters website mentioned that search results in the new search engine would be more relevant. It was also noted that less spam websites would occupy a position on the first three search results pages.

A quick test for some of the keywords that Ghacks ranks for did not reveal any major changes. Please post your opinion about Google’s next-generation search infrastructure in the comments.

Tags: Google, google search, google search engine, keywords, search engine, seo, serps, webmaster

Google Adds Quick Search Options To Google Image Search

Martin — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 21:16:21 +0000

Google introduced a new feature to Google Search in last month that would allow users to quickly change several important factors of the search without having to configure them in advanced options or using a plugin or add-on to do so. The new features are available by clicking on the options link in the Google search results. They are displayed on the same page in a sidebar like interface and provide quick access to options that allow a user to change the time period of the search results, the type of results, view related searches or display more text in the description of each search result than usual.

This new type of comfortably accessing search options has now been brought to Google Images as well. Users who conduct a search in the Google Image search engine will now be able to click on the same Options link to access and change several important search parameters.

The options allow a search engine user to specify a certain size for the images that are displayed in the search results, change the type of image (face, photo, clip art or line drawing) or specify a dominant color. All of these options are also available in the advanced image search parameters. The benefit for the search engine user is that these options are now directly accessible.

Tags: Google, google image search, google images, google search, image search, search engine

Microsoft Page Hunt

Martin — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 08:39:02 +0000

Microsoft’s new search engine Bing is doing quite well in several search engine marketing studies. It could do better and one interesting idea that the Microsoft researchers had was to create a game that would help the search results to be better. The game is an experimental game that is currently available on the Microsoft Labs website.

It basically centers on the following idea: The quality of search engine results can be improved by adding a human factor into the equation. Page Hunt will display websites to its visitors who have to guess the search phrase that is used to find that specific page in Bing. Points are awarded if the website is in the top 5 of the search engine for that query.

The researchers on the other hand are able to learn from the data that the users enter. They can use both positive and negative hits to improve the quality of Bing search results. Websites that are displayed to users range from commercial websites to those that promote open source software like Open Office. It is however sometimes quite difficulty to find the right search term to get the points.

Head over to Page Hunt if you want to play a little game and help Microsoft improve the quality of the Bing search results. Page Hunt requires Microsoft Silverlight.

Tags: bing, bing search, microsoft, microsoft bing, microsoft page hunt, page hunt, search engine

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