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How to use The "New" Google: "Universal Search"

On Wednesday this week Google announced "its critical first steps toward a universal search model that will offer users a more integrated and comprehensive way to search for and view information online. The company also introduced an updated homepage design and several new navigation features that make it faster and easier for users to find the information they are looking for" (Google press release). 

In an apt analogy to agricultural hoards--those oh so important repositories of the yet with us agricultural revolution, Google compared the new strategy to the demolition of informational silos: "The ultimate goal of universal search is to break down the silos of information that exist on the web and provide the very best answer every time a user enters a query. While we still have a long way to go, today's announcements are a big step in that direction."

Basically, a Google search will now return blended results from the array of Google "silos:'  videos, images, news, maps, books, websites, and so on.  As time goes on, the company plans to integrate the different resources more obviously in the results page, with simple mechanisms to filter based on information type.  What makes Google so successful is their ranking algorithms.  You almost always find what you want near the top of the results page.  This is so amazing, because a) the average number of search terms entered in a Google search is 1.3; and b) almost no one proceeds to page two of the search results page.  The moral: most people are very lazy searchers and want (or will accept) what Google finds as relevant on results page one.

Though the " new" Google interface is still spare even by minimalist standards, you will observe new links in the upper left of the page.

These same links will now appear at the top of the results page.

Clicking any of them will perform a focused Google image, video, news, etc. search. 

What gets revealed when you click the more link?

The Blog Search is very valuable.  Blogger is the proprietary, free blogging service of Google, so it gets its own category, for reasons that seem more commercial than practical.  Clicking the Blogger link will lead you to the blogger login page.  It will not perform a search on blogger blogs.

Orkut, for those who don't know, is a social networking service run by Google; a MySpace wannabe, like so many others.

After performing a "more" search, you will see yet another more button.  Clicking it this time will produce a smaller set of search tools, with an "even more" link. 

Clicking the "even more" link will take you to the exhaustive page of Google search tools.

It is a prodigious list indeed, and goes on much further than illustrated here.

Another innovation on the home page is a link to something called iGoogle.  (They used the i for no apparent reason other than to prevent Apple from prefixing it to every known word and consequently trademark every known instance).  iGoogle is your Google "portal."  (And we thought portals were dead).  It is Googlishly spare, sort of like Yahoo cleaned up and made presentable for grown up company, but can be customized to be as cluttered and confusing as you wish.

The elements you see illustrated above come standard with your iGoogle interface (and note in the upper right it is simple to switch back to Classic Coke--I mean, view).  If you have Windows Vista you already have these things on your sidebar and am not sure why you would want them on your Google interface, but each to her own.

If you click the Sign in link in the supper right you can sign in with your GMail account information and load your personal customized Google "portal" page which can be elaborated with colorful themes, and thousands of freely available widgets.

Is all this customization too much for you, or not enough?  Google is ever advancing.  The new navigation links that appear at the top of the search page will eventually be transformed into tabs with specific search results illustrated in tabbed fashion.

If you would like to see some new directions Google is taking search technology, you can use the new Google Experimental Search from Google labs.  Experimental Search will permit you to see search results in timeline or map view, with contextual links to help refine the search.

Faster, better, more accurate, more easily extended, what's not to like about the new Google.

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