Two Google stories in a day! They’re testing a new interface for their search engine that they’re calling Google Suggest.
One of the problems for many users of Google has been the huge number of results returned including ones that apparently had nothing to do with the original request. Other search engines have taken the approach of gathering what they feel are related results together to try and assist the searcher. Google Suggest is Google’s shot at it.
The interface looks the same as it does currently – simple, stripped down and functional – but as you type in your search term, a drop-down box shows a number of suggestions based on what you have entered. It also lists the number of search results would be returned, giving a further guide to searchers.
As an example of how it works we entered “digital”. This bring up the predictable “digital camera”, but helpfully for novice users, it also lists “digital camera review”, which might be more what they are looking for. There are ten suggestions lists in total, which in this case included “Digital radio” and possibly just for a little variety, “digital blasphemy“, not something we’ve come across before, but as it turns out a site selling computer rendered wallpapers that is well worth a look.
Selecting the term bring up the expected list of Google results, but with the Google Suggest feature persisting in the search box.
As ever, Google are innovating in their own way, and given their skill in improving upon innovation, we see no reasons the suggested search terms shouldn’t also list of the audio/video/photo results making searching quicker.
More importantly it’s key to remember that this is helping Google raise revenue. The more precise the search term, the better the match for displayed TextAds, the more likely the searcher is to click on them and in turn, the more income Google will make.
Before you rush to the site to test the ‘rude’ words, don’t get too excited, many don’t bring up suggestions. Although we can well see that testing of the limits of this will become a strand of postings on boingboing.net. Google Suggest beta