CiL2008 – Google
Posted by Miriella on 9 April 2008
Greg Notess – SearchEngineShowdown.com
Google Database Spread: integration: images, news, video, etc. Most users don’t bother clicking on anything up top (web, images, maps, etc). So it tries to change the algorithm to help users find what they really want.
Database changes to Google:
Dec 2006 – web, images, video, news, maps, blogs, books, froogle, “even more”
Nov 2007 – added blogger, documents (but blogger took us right to blogger and not search)
April 2008 – shifted names around, brings the more popular, more important ones up like video, groups, scholar. – will always shift things around in the best interests of the user and/or sponsor
Remember that Google can be customized – you can change filtered search, the number of items that are displayed, etc. so if you say “go to google and search for xxx” you two would not ever necessarily get the same results.
More google changes: google ui tests, moving content blocks, added related searches, scrolling ads, removed rss & atom feeds from web. expanded sub-site links. Fresher results (thought that doesn’t necessarily work), date search limits, added more file types like Google Earth, Flash, Autodesk.
Advanced search has been streamlined and works much more smoothly and makes more sense to people. Not so complicated. Can add licensing, languages, etc.
Google Book Search: added worldcat records. added links to implement into your own website.
Google News: duplicate stories removed, new sort options, video news, hosted ap news, advanced source suggestions as you type
Google Reader Searches: subscribed feeds (about 500 posts) – lets you search through all the ones that you’ve fed, and the ones you’ve already read as well.
Google Scholar: added elsevier titles, most frequent authors list.
Zero Phrase Search: Google change – they’re working on changing results – sometimes it will say No results found and will just search for the phrase without quotes - sometimes it won’t tell you no results found. Many other sites will give suggestions, tell you what else to search for, or just say not found.
Yahoo! directory categories gone from results. support of semantic formats. stopped numbering results. added “more from this site”. Search assist. Images - includes Flickr!
Ask.com – good to get overview, extra privacy sessions.
Exalead – allows truncation, proximity, but has not expanded too much yet and database a wee bit outdated – still has great options to narrow down and limit results.
Gigablast – new launch, freshness dating.
