Computer Tips From A Computer Guy

New Google features – Search Options and Rich Snippets

Posted: 13 May 2009 03:09 AM PDT

Yesterday Google clued us in on a couple of new features they are working for the search engine at their annual Searchology event. Last year they released Universal Search and this year had some exciting new innovations.

Firstly, one change you will see immediately in the search results are the new "search options". Search options basically is a toolset that lets you filter your search results on the fly.

It's kind of like advanced search, but without the need to go to advanced search and click lots of radio buttons. The new changes also have some interesting ways to view your search results other than in the normal ten blue text links view.

Source: Dullest

When you perform a search, you will see a link called "Show options", which will expand to the the left-hand sidebar you see in the above image. Here you can filter you search by genre, such as only videos, only forums, or only reviews.

You can also now quickly choose a time frame for viewing the results. Earlier, you had to do this in Advanced search, which was a pain and took too many clicks. Now you can filter by time period with a single click.

Below that, you have the option of adding images to the search results, which will be pulled off the page that the link refers to. Or you can choose "More text", which will show more content of the page in the search results.

Further below is the cool stuff that lets you completely change the way you browse search results. Related searches will show you a set of keywords that are closely related to your current search.

The Wonder Wheel is an interesting new view of the search results that basically creates a visual representation of the related search terms. When you click on a bubble, the search results will be updated automatically for the new term. It lets you quickly see a cluster of related topics.

Source: SEOforclients

Finally, the Timeline option lets you see the search results in a chronological order. Note that this is not ordered by the date the articles were written or when the web page were indexed, but instead by the dates mentioned inside of the articles.

For example, if you search for something like cars, you'll see results in the timeline going back to the 1800s and 1900s. Obviously, those articles just happen to mention those dates, so that's how they show up in the timeline.

Source: PCWorld

If you actually want to see an article written during a specific time period, then you can use the second option in search results, which lets you choose the time frame ( recent, 24 hours, past week, past year).

Overall, the changes are really useful and make searching for stuff on the Internet even easier. Enjoy!