The Next Web

Google launches new search result views

Written on January 28, 2008 – 10:08 pm
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten,

Google just introduced a new set of experimental views for search results. You can test the new views yourself right now. Google is always experimenting with new features aimed at improving the search experience and once in a while they test them on the general audience. If they get enough positive feedback the experiments become standard.

Today they give us ‘Alternate views for search results’ which can show results in a timeline, on a map, or in context of other information types. The timeline view work best for searches related to people, companies, events and places. Try it yourself with this example: ‘space exploration‘.

Keyword suggestions are pretty much what you would expect. A sort of ‘auto-complete’ function for Google. Try it here: http://www.google.com/webhp?q=google&esrch=GoogleSuggestBeta

Keyboard shortcuts is by far the most exciting new feature. This is going to be a huge timesaver for a lot of people. Here are the new keyboard shortcuts and a demo:

*Key*		Action
J		Selects the next result.
K		Selects the previous result.
O		Opens the selected result.
<enter>		Opens the selected result.
/		Puts the cursor in the search box.
<esc>		Removes the cursor from the search box.

Also new are Left-hand search navigation and Right-hand contextual search navigation. If you want to see additional results of a particular content type, just click a link in the left-hand search navigation. Similar to the left-hand search navigation, right-hand contextual search navigation allows you to search deeper in a particular type of content or to search related terms - but from the right side of the page.

From: Official Google Blog

I hope you like that post!

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