Google Unified Search is a very interesting search add-on for the Firefox web browser. You might have read about add-ons that combine Google search results with those of other search engines such as Bing or Wolfram Alpha. Google Unified Search takes that concept a step further by integrating multiple search engines in Google results. It adds support for Bing, Wikipedia, Wolfram Alpha, Stumbleupon and Delicious in the Google search results.

Search results of one search engine besides Google Search are displayed at a time but it is possible to switch to the results of another one without having to reload the page. By default Google search results and Bing search results are displayed in the interface. A control in the top right corner makes it possible to switch the alternative search engine to another one.

A left click on a search result in the Google column will open the website as usual. A click on a result in the alternative search engine on the other hand will open the result just in the area of that search engine. Users who want to open the website normally will have to open it in a new tab or window instead.

Google Unified Search is an excellent way of displaying additional information about a search term in the Google search results.

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The blog lists the major changes of the core update mentioning in the end that about 1.1 million data values have been affected by the search engine update. Most of the changes listed in the blog post add new searches or information to the search engine. This includes for example the updates to some European countries like Slovakia, regions (like Wales), country borders (India, China..) but also more interesting comparisons (USA deficit vs. UK), combined time series plots of different quantities (population Germany gdp) and additional ways of searching for information and data entries.

There is obviously still a fundamental different between the information that are provided by Wolfram Alpha and classic search engines like Google Search, Bing or Yahoo Search. The developers are however on a good way to fill a gap that most users were probably not aware of until they discovered that they could use Wolfram Alpha in a certain way to compute information that would take lots of manual work otherwise.

Still, the search engine is limited and it sometimes depends on the phrase if it understands the search query.

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Wolfram|Alpha’s long-term goal is to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable and accessible to everyone. We aim to collect and curate all objective data; implement every known model, method, and algorithm; and make it possible to compute whatever can be computed about anything. Our goal is to build on the achievements of science and other systematizations of knowledge to provide a single source that can be relied on by everyone for definitive answers to factual queries.

The goal of Wolfram|Alpha is therefor not to index as many pages as possible. It clearly states that they want to collect and curate objective data only which limits the search range drastically. It shines when it comes to search queries like “weather berlin germany june 3, 1988″, “next solar ecplipse” or “us deficit” although it largely depends on how the search request is entered. A search for “current us deficit” for example will not yield any results at all while the “us deficit” query will display results.

The search engine is in alpha stage and it is very likely that it will improve over time.

Wolfram|Alpha aims to bring expert-level knowledge and capabilities to the broadest possible range of people—spanning all professions and education levels. Our goal is to accept completely free-form input, and to serve as a knowledge engine that generates powerful results and presents them with maximum clarity.

Wolfram|Alpha is an ambitious, long-term intellectual endeavor that we intend will deliver increasing capabilities over the years and decades to come. With a world-class team and participation from top outside experts in countless fields, our goal is to create something that will stand as a major milestone of 21st century intellectual achievement.

It is a Google Killer? No, definitely not. It does however provide better results than other search engines for results that can be computed mathematically.

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