Nice new search options from Google
Just the other day I was trying to find some reviews on a particular software product but was really only interested in quite recent ones. As the product in question has been around for some years there were plenty of reviews about it but I had a really difficult time finding recent ones with Google. When I got to work this morning and checked my Twitter feed I found an interesting tweet leading me in the direction of Google and their 'Searchology' event held this week. At the event they announced some new features including 'Search Options' and 'Rich Snippets'. Search options looks really interesting and provides some great ways of examing your search results and helps you get answers easily to questions like my above mentioned problem. The following video from Google provides a nice overview of all that this new feature does: As well as looking at recent results you can look at videos, forums and reviews. Results can be displayed in different ways such as visually or on a timeline (for me its interesting to look at the timeline search and compare it to how we have implemented a similar feature for one of our customers). Rich Snippets looks interesting in that they:
extract and show more useful information from web pages than the preview text that you are used to seeing. For example, if you are thinking of trying out a new restaurant and are searching for reviews, rich snippets could include things like the average review score, the number of reviews, and the restaurant's price range"Rich snippets rely on other webpages using microformats and RDF to provide information to Google. Nice to see them looking at open and existing specifications here. For our own benefit, I think we will need to have a look at how this feature can enhance the services we provide for ourselves and our customers.
