Google’s move to “universal search”
Google said today it will offer more features in its search results, including things like a new navigation bar at the top left side of the home page to things like Google’s Calendar, Docs & Spreadsheets and Picasa Web Albums.
The effort is part of what it calls a move to “universal search,” much of which will be subtle at first, but will change over time.
Many of the changes will begin today, although we at VentureBeat still haven’t seen all of the changes take effect. So far, no new navigation bar, for example. We checked with Google, and a spokesman said the changes are still rolling out, and that everyone will see the changes by tomorrow morning. The changes were announced during Google’s Searchology event today, which VentureBeat attended.
More significantly, the move is also an answer to a threat posed by a string of other search engine companies, including Ask and Hakia, which are starting to give users clusters of information about a search term neatly on the first page of results — rather than spitting out the pages and pages of results like Google.
Google said that search results will include links to more sources, such as videos, books and blogs and maps. Take the example of a search for Star Wars character Darth Vader. Google said users want info about the character and the actor – not just web pages that mention the movie. Google will deliver search results that include different elements — such as a humorous parody of the movie, images of the Darth Vader character, news reports on the latest Lucas film, as well as websites focused on the actor James Earl Jones – ranked according to how relevant Google thinks they are to the query.
See image below for what we are seeing as of 1pm on Wednesday:
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Google said it is introducing a new “technical infrastructure” to enable the intensive computations to produce universal search results — and that it’s upgrading its ranking algorithm to compare the different clusters of information.
Here are the other two parts of Google’s announcement today:
New links have been added above the search results — For example, a search for “python” will now generate links to Google’s Blogs, Books, Groups, and Code pages. See below.
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Google Experimental — Available on Google Labs, you can use this to search results on a map or timeline. For instance, when you search for “Albert Einstein” you can choose to see search results on a map that shows locations mentioned within web pages about Einstein or on a timeline illustrating the history of Einstein’s life. We don’t see this feature yet, either.
Source: VentureBeat