41 items | 11 visits
Google User Interface
Updated on Dec 05, 14
Created on May 11, 10
Category: Computers & Internet
URL:
The new user interface — UI for the tech crowd — places search options into a column on the left-hand side of the search results page. Search results themselves appear in the middle, in a wider column. Ads appear in the right column, though some ads continue to appear in the middle column above editorial picks
Within the column are three sections, which I’ll cover in turn.
The top portion lists “content types,” that is, the types of content that a search can be narrowed to. For example, in the search below for tidal waves, you can see that the results contain things like web pages, images and video matches, all blended together in the same column as part of Google’s Universal Search system:
For example, in the search below for tidal waves, you can see that the results contain things like web pages, images and video matches, all blended together in the same column as part of Google’s Universal Search system:
That the default “Everything” search — where Google is mixing together everything it believes is relevant to your query, regardless of the exact content. Filtering By Content Type
What if you’d like only images of tidal waves? That’s where the colorful content type choices come in. Select “Images” and that content type gets highlighted in blue, to indicate that the results to the right have now been filtered to show only image matches (along with, oddly, two ads from Google rivals Yahoo and Ask both hoping to catch some Google searchers):
For example, the tidal wave search above features options to narrow by Images and Videos. But a search for iPhone provides provides different narrowing options:
For example, the tidal wave search above features options to narrow by Images and Videos. But a search for iPhone provides provides different narrowing options:
Now the choices are to narrow by Shopping, News and Blog content. The assumption is that people searching for iPhone information may be most interested in these categories of results, while those searching for tidal waves may be more interested in images or videos. As before, selecting one of these other options narrows to the particular content type, such as how choosing News brings back only news content about the iPhone:
Now the choices are to narrow by Shopping, News and Blog content. The assumption is that people searching for iPhone information may be most interested in these categories of results, while those searching for tidal waves may be more interested in images or videos. As before, selecting one of these other options narrows to the particular content type, such as how choosing News brings back only news content about the iPhone:
Not happy with the content choices that Google features by default? That’s where the “More” option at the end of the list comes in. Select that, and you can see all available options ...
Sources Of Content
Where’s all this content coming from? Google has many specialty search engines that it taps into. Below are the ones that the new menu gives access to:
Blogs: Google Blogs, blog and RSS/feed content from across the web. See our Google: Blog Search category for more background.
Books: Google Books, book results from Google’s library scanning project and books contributed by authors and publishers. See our Google: Book Search category for more.
Images: Google Images, matching images from around the web. See our Google: Images category for more.
News: Google News, news and blog content from across the web. See our Google: News category for more.
Maps: Google Maps, maps and local listings from across the web and third-party sources. See our Google: Maps & Local category for more.
Shopping: Google Product Search, product and shopping listings from across the web. See our Google: Product Search category for more.
Videos: Google Video, video from across the web — including Google-owned YouTube but not limited to that. See our Google: YouTube & Video category for more.
Updates: Google Real Time Search, which shows the latest information found by Google from sources such as news, blogs and especially social sharing sites such as Twitter, Facebook and MySpace. Unlike the other services above, Google Real Time Search does not have a standalone site that you can use. See our Google: Real Time Search category for more information.
Search Tools
If you’ve made it through digesting the new content types in the search options column, there’s more fun in store midway down, in the search tools section. This allows you to narrow results within a content type by time or by other relevant filters.
As with content types, what appears by default will depend on the type of query issued. For example, for volcanic ash:
Latest is shown as a time filtering option, which makes sense given that many people may seek the latest results on this breaking news topic.
In contrast, consider these filtering choices for iPad:
“Latest” returns as a time filter, along with “Past 3 Days.”
But more interesting are the “Fewer shopping sites” and “More shopping sites” options. Again, these make sense. For this query, Google can safely assume many people might be interested in shopping info about the iPad. However, a good chunk of people might also want more informational pages about the iPad — hence a handy ability to “deshoppify” the results.
As with content types, if you’re not happy with the default search tools picks that Google makes, you can use the “More search tools” option to see a full range. Here’s what you get doing that from an “Everything” search:
Time Filtering
The first set of tools involve filtering by time — narrowing to “Latest” results, past 24 hours, past week, month, year or even a custom date range, complete with pop-up calendar picker:
Occasionally, I’ve also seen other options appear, such as “Past 2 months” or “Past 3 days,” as noted above.
While time filtering sounds great, my experience over the years has been that search engines, including Google, often get the dates wrong on pages for a variety of reasons. For a deeper drill-down on these issues, see these past articles:
If you select a date option, by default results will be sorted by relevance within that date period. For instance:
Above, I did a search for the word the, narrowed to the past 24 hours. I like this search because it points out one issue with date filtering. Notice the White House home page is third on the list, with a time of 11 hours ago. That’s not the time the page was first authored — the White House has been online much longer than that! It might be the time when Google last noticed a change was made to the page. It could also simply be the last time Google visited the page. Such are the issues when filtering by date.
Mainly, however, notice that the pages are not listed in chronological order. Some “fresher” pages appear below older ones. That’s because the default sort is by relevancy. However, select the “Sorted by date” option, and this changes:
earby Filtering Another option is the ability to filter results to those near your location — at least the location Google assumes you’re at, which it determines by the internet address (IP address) reported by your internet service provider, company, school or organization.
Nearby filtering sounds great. For example, a seach for topics such as bicycle rentals or zoos or moving companies when toggled to “nearby” should bring back results relevant to your particular location.
Unfortunately, I didn’t find using the option made much difference, much as was the case when we first reported on it being offered in Feburary (see Google Adds “Nearby” Local Search To Options Panel). In part, I suspect this is because Google already does localizing of results by default, through its personalized results. For instance, since Google already knows I’m in San Francisco (at the time I wrote this), many of my results I tested already had San Francisco-related material ranking highly. In effect, I was already being shown “nearby” results even without clicking on that.
The nearby options are shown below. When selected, you can further refine “nearby” to mean at your city, region or state level — as well as entering a custom location, if Google’s not detecting your area correctly:
Further down, there are three alternative “views” you can apply to your results other than the default “standard” view:
Related Searches puts a list of queries related to your original search at the top of the search results:
Timeline tries to build a timeline of interesting facts related to your query, by exacting information about the subject that’s associated with particular dates on web pages. You get a chart and facts listed in chronological order:
Wonder Wheel is a visual refinement tool, which allows you click your way through related topics as they eminate out like spokes on a wheel. Each click to a new topic causes the results shown alongside the current “wheel” to change:
Sites With Images gives you what’s promised — web sites that also have images. Since most web sites have images, it’s hard to imagine this being that useful.
41 items | 11 visits
Google User Interface
Updated on Dec 05, 14
Created on May 11, 10
Category: Computers & Internet
URL: