Google Searchology

Google Searchology 2009 organized on May 12, 2009, witnessed several novel changes in the Google search options. In the preceding years Google has used this platform to showcase two significant improvements in its search i.e. Universal Search and Personalized Search. Searchology 2009 focused on the users' intent. From now on, the online user will be able to carry out search operations in a more refined and targeted manner. Google has rolled out scores of improvement in its search interface as well as technology to know about exactly what the user is looking for and make the relevant resources available to the user. The distinguished speakers of the event were:

Wonder Wheel

Wonder Wheel provides the user with a flash based interface having the searched query in the middle and the related queries at its branches. The text based results are still available but shifted rightwards. As the user clicks on the related query, the wonder wheel expands and the results at the right hand side of the page changes. The main aim of the wonder wheel is to guide the user to reach to the relevant resource in an intuitive manner.

Google Squared

When a search is made via Google Squared, the results are presented in the form of rows and columns. Further, these results can be exported to an online spreadsheet program whereby it can be stored into a database.

Although it was presented to the group of media and people from search industry on May 12, 2009, yet it was not made public as Google’s Associate Product Manager Alex Komoroske admitted that owing to the search flaws in Google Squared, there is still a good amount of work to be done on it and will be launched in Google Labs by the end of this month.

Rich Snippet

Rich Snippet is really an excellent feature to display additional data from other pages about the resources being displayed in the search result. In order to so, webmasters need to incorporate open standards such as microformats or RDFa in their web pages. As for now, Google does not guarantee that the use of these open standards will result in rich snippets but webmasters have the option to contact Google for its inclusion via form at Google Webmasters site.

Notes and references

• Google Searchology Webcast
• Google Official Blog
• Search Engine Land
• Microformats or RDFa
• Los Angeles Times

Speakers

1. Udi Manber, VP, Engineering (Core Search)
2. Patrick Riley, Software Engineer
3. Scott Huffman, Engineering Director
4. Marissa Mayer, VP, Search Products and User Experience
5. Nandu Jankiram, Associate Product Manager
6. Alex Komoroske, Associate Product Manager
7. Kavi Goel, Product Manager
8. John Taylor, Software Engineer