Remixing the search results might be the answer for a better search engine. SearchMash, Google's playground, has been updated and now includes results from blog search and video search, which are displayed on-demand in the right sidebar. Now when you choose to see the results from a certain type of search, you can still view the top results from the other search types.While Google's experiments are interesting, I think a better idea would be to integrate other search flavors into the main index and enable them if the query is appropriate.
Previously in SearchMash:
SearchMash is found (10/02)
Sections make an appearance (11/05)
I like the newer interface, seems more compact, but bigger at the same time (strange, i know)
ReplyDeleteOne thing i noticed though is when you click to "See [category] results" (say, Video), it actually refreshes the whole page again.
If they could make that process almost seamless like with the expanding, then it would be really really awesome!
I like the feedback thing as well, that could really make the search index better, BUT it does mean it can artificially increase the importance of results over further searches which COULD have more information.
Also, not to mention abuse either, so who knows...
SearchMash is very similar to the old A9 interface, is it not?
ReplyDeleteI wonder if it is Udi Manber (former CEO of A9, now at Google) who is behind SearchMash.
Can anybody think of a reason that this isn't at Google Labs?
ReplyDeleteIt was supposed to be a secret. As you can see, there's no Google branding there, so people should evaluate their experiments without knowing it's a Google site.
ReplyDeleteOf course, now we know that. But they may have many testers that don't.
The first sentence of the privacy policy linked to from the bottom of every page is "SearchMash is a website operated by Google Inc.", so I guess it can't be too big of a secret. But, I see what you mean.
ReplyDelete@Wulf: Of course it's secret! Whoever reads the privacy policies (besides nuts like us)?!? :D
ReplyDelete@Mysterious: lol :P
ReplyDeleteBTW: It took until now for Google Alerts to tell me this page had been updated o.O