Introducing new search views
Posted by Andrew Hogue, Uber Tech
Lead
Introducing experimental views for search results href="http://www.google.com/experimental" id="u5_h" >experimental
There have been a lot of recent improvements to web search, but the
appearance of results themselves has been pretty constant — 10 or
so web pages in a vertical list. Frequently this is exactly the
right format, but for some searches you need more options and more
control. That's why we've created our
search page
You may have noticed our
"alternative views" experiment showcased last May.
This lets you visualize your search results in new ways, and
we'd like to highlight some of the features we've recently
added.
Map view
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.
After scrolling or zooming the map, try clicking on the
"Update Results" button near the top left corner of the
map to show more results just in the area you're looking
at.
Timeline view
Timeline view does the same thing as map view, but for dates found
on the web. This includes dates of
upcoming or
events, or even
biographical information — all generated automatically from
your search results.
The graph across the top of the page summarizes how dates in your
results are spread through time, with higher bars representing a
larger number of unique dates. Click anywhere on the graph to zoom
in to that particular period of time, and use the text box to the
right to specify any range of years, months, or days. Much as in
map view, the results below the graph emphasize the dates contained
on each page.
Info view
Info view is a bit different. It doesn't dramatically change
the visualization of results; web pages are still displayed
vertically as usual. Now you'll notice a new control panel on
the right side of the page:
And selecting "images" from the control panel displays
some nice images from the page:
If you run a search and find many of your results are looking
similar, try using info view. It may highlight the differences
between results and help you select the best page for your
needs.
Tell us what you think
You can opt in to the alternative views experiments so they become
your main search UI — as well as try out many other new search
tools — on the
page. After opting in, send us feedback by clicking on the
experiment name in the upper right part of the search page and
selecting "Take our survey". We'd love to hear your
thoughts!
Tags: , Andrew, experimental, Hogue, LeadIntroducing, Posted, Tech, Uber