Webware

Google's new search interface is being tested among small groups of users.

(Credit: Screenshot by Tom Krazit/CNET)

Google's new search results page brings more search options to the fore amid brighter colors that nod at recent changes made by its rivals.

Small groups of Google searchers over the past week or so have seen the new design as the company tests the new user interface, but not everybody was able to gain access to the interface. On Wednesday, Gizmodo published some tips on how to force Google into serving the new pages, and therefore we can bring you some screen shots of the new look and feel for Google search.

The first thing you'll probably notice is the left-hand rail, which has Google's search options feature presented in full color and in permanent position: previously, you had to toggle the search options feature at the top of the search results page, and the links were presented in Google's classic spartan blue. The search bar at the top of the page also has a big blue "Search" button in place of the gray button that used to occupy that space.

Marissa Mayer, vice president of search products and user experience at Google, told Search Engine Land last week that the new pages are designed to eliminate inconsistencies in how Google presented search results after it added several new elements to the page. But it also mimics what Yahoo and Microsoft have been doing with their search results pages, focusing on presentation and new ways to sort results.

Let us know what you think of the new search user interface. Fair warning: the procedure described by Gizmodo caused a few temporary issues for some CNET folks that cleared up upon a few refreshes. Google will be testing the new pages for several weeks before deciding what will make the final cut for all searchers.

The next time you search Google for life expectancies or number of Internet users in the U.S., you'll find the specific figures plus an interactive chart letting you compare the U.S. with other countries.

Since Wednesday, Google has been tapping into data from the World Bank to provide key details and interactive charts on specific topics along with its own search results. The goal is to better help you search for and compare certain types of public data.

The World Bank is providing Google with facts and figures on 17 key indicators, including population growth, fertility rate, gross national product, and energy use.

Enter one of the 17 indicators into a Google search. You can phrase it as the specific indicator, for example, "population world," or type it as a natural question: "What is the population of the world?"

At the top of the search results, you'll find a thumbnail chart along with the latest statistics. (According to the World Bank, 72.4 percent of the U.S. population is on the Internet as of 2008.) Click on the chart or accompanying link, and up pops a larger interactive graph where you can visually compare the U.S. with other countries by clicking on their check boxes.

(Credit: Google)

You can embed the chart's HTML in your own blog or Web page and opt for the data to be updated automatically anytime the World Bank's information changes. Finally, a link for more info brings you directly to the World Bank's Web site where you can dig further into the results of your search.

This latest partnership with World Bank is part of Google's effort to offer data beyond that which it can grab from your average Web page. Back in April, the search giant started integrating stats and charts from the U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

But the World Bank is the first source to provide global data for Google. The World Bank's figures come from its World Development Indicators (WDI), a collection of data derived from its own research and that of 30 other sources. The global data includes statistics on social, financial, and environmental areas encompassing more than 100 different countries.

On Thursday Yahoo rolled out deeper integration with Facebook as part of its SearchMonkey open semantic program. Now, when a person's public Facebook profile shows up in search results, there's a list of options on top that let you add them as a friend, send them a message, poke them, and see who they're friends with.

This (obviously) only works on Facebook profiles that have been made available for indexing by search engines, something Facebook introduced in late 2007. Users also have the option to opt out of getting their profiles indexed entirely.

One thing you can do to improve seeing someone's profile at the top of Yahoo results is add "on Facebook" to your search, as that's how Facebook formats the listing. In most cases, simply adding that brought up the person's Facebook listing to the top where it was otherwise showing up on the second or third result pages.

Instead of just a link to the person's profile, you now get quick links to various actions for Facebook. If you're signed into Facebook already, these options hop you right to the action.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

On Tuesday Google Maps got a small tweak that's been long overdue. Now, instead of just showing you the top 10 results of a local search on the map, it shows all of them. It still places the little map markers that match up with the top 10results, but now you can see other places that may be closer.

I can see this being most helpful if it trickles down to mobile devices, where you may be searching for something that's within walking distance. In my case, when searching for a nearby camera store I got three or four results I wouldn't have otherwise seen since they were not in the top results. Location-friendly service Yelp has offered something similar to this for quite some time now; Google, however has not been quite as innovative with its own tools.

Google says this feature will make its way out to other domains that use Google's maps. For now, the only way to see the additional results is from the Google Maps search page.

Previously you wouldn't see results outside of the top 10 provided by Google. The new tweak shows you places which may not have as much relevance, but are closer.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

(Credit: CNET)

If you're one whose search results lead you to a Wikipedia page nine times out of ten, you would do well to install the Googlepedia extension for Firefox.

This free, terrifically easy add-on pulls the Wikipedia article most closely associated with your search term into the right half of a Google search results page. Modest controls let you expand, shrink, or hide the article.

Here's the best part: clicking a link within the article feeds the term back into Google's search engine, and therefore back into Googlepedia's cycle of serving up Wikipedia articles.

Googlepedia will undoubtedly save you time if a quick search is all you need. If you're one to submit to Wikipedia's siren call of never-ending knowledge, download at your own risk.

Search Cloudlet is a Firefox extension from the International Software and Productivity Engineering Institute (INTSPEI) that gives users a cloud of tags to help modify and focus searches on Google and Yahoo. Once installed it will show up on top of search results and provides a simple way to tweak the original query by offering up keywords pulled from the results.

Words that appear more often in the results appear as bigger, bolder tags that you can click on to re-start the query with that word tacked on. The creators recommend dialing up the number of default search results to 100, which may make your searches slightly slower but result in a much more accurate tag cloud. This can be done from the user preferences in both Google and Yahoo.

In addition to standard Google and Yahoo searches the extension works on Google News both for keywords and locations. It also works for Google Blog search in a really neat way by adding tags for each author that you can click on to filter which posts come up.

Search Cloudlet is an experimental add-on and does not yet work on the latest beta of Firefox 3.1.

Google and Yahoo search results get smart tag clusters that let you narrow down results with Firefox extension Search Cloudlet.

(Credit: INTSPEI)

Have you noticed the ever-growing number of Google-owned sites that have crept into the search giant's results? Doing a Google search for Diet Coke and Mentos will take you to a results page where half of the items are videos on Google's two video sites: YouTube and Google Video. The same goes for millions of other search queries that are pulling from the ever growing number of Google sites and services.

Is there a problem here? It depends on what you were looking for in the first place.

Timo Paloheimo, a crafty developer/blogger from Finland, seems to think the all-around increase of Google-owned sites in the results is impeding with what the search engine is all about. To remedy this he's put together a Google custom search called Google minus Google that removes all of Google properties from the equation. It's like any other Google custom search, except for the giant handpicked blacklist of Google properties. The previous version, which was launched early last week, kept the blacklist at the beginning of each search query, making it less precise.

Coming back to the original "problem" of having Google's results show up with some prominence, the initial example of the Diet Coke and Mentos is a classic case of where you're likely to be looking for the video that is best known for getting its big break on YouTube. To Google Minus Google's credit, doing the same search puts a Wikipedia article on top, followed by the Eepybird people, who were the creators of the video that's the best known example of the Web phenomenon.

Neither solution is perfect, but it's kind of startling to see the differences with some simple tweaks. SEO conspiracy fanatics will always give Google a hard time since it knows the ins and outs of its own search tool, however the majority of users are always going to want to search as much of the Web as possible.

[via NYT and Lifehacker]

LinkScanner Lite warns against a hidden IFrame launcher in Megaupload.

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Those of you who haven't yet installed a link scanning or Web site rating program for your Firefox or IE-based browser should hop to it--and consider using LinkScanner Lite when you do.

I've been using LinkScanner Lite and McAfee Site Adviser on both Firefox and IE browsers. Overkill? No way. Each program serves the greater goal of alerting you to dangerous links but differ in their approaches.... Read more

Sproose is a relatively young search engine that now allows its users to control search results via voting. Each search result gets its own vote count and the option to click "I like it," which brings the result up to the top of the heap. The obvious comparison here is Digg.

Sproose searches through videos, using Blinkx, although these results cannot be re-ordered or voted on. Users can also opt-in to have their votes recorded on their profiles for others to see and vote on. All results get their own comment area, where users can talk--although I doubt many will want to write about a search result.

One of the more interesting inclusions in Sproose is its tag cloud, where users can browse for sites via tags. This is kind of an interesting form of Web discovery service, although it's lacking a clear way to add tags to sites yourself.

The obvious concern with sites like these is gaming results. Sproose deters some of this by removing votes from unregistered users after a limited time and requiring registration, although savvy spammers can usually find a way to circumvent whatever verification processes exist. Sproose's results are only as good as its users, and if security fails, so does the site.

See also: aftervote

Search results can be voted and commented on by users. The results with the highest vote counts go on top.

(Credit: CNET Networks)