Google's Test Search Engine

Bengt noted Google's SearchMash which is a testbed search engine. Google spokesbot says: "The goal of Searchmash is to test innovative user interfaces in order to continually improve the overall search experience for our users. The experimental search engine looks very different from Google's Web sites and lacks Google branding. In this way, Google believes the site will yield more objective feedback from users."

Re:feedback on the feedback

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. Would also be nice to be able to move the search result gadgets around.

Requires javascript

[Anonymous Coward]

It requires javascript for some reason. I think I prefer the original google interface.

Re:It looks like ... a search engine

[kurtis25]

It's the other things that are 'revolutionary'. 1. You can (or at least could at one point) rearrange the search results by dragging them up and down - Future application on influencing the ranking on sites. 2. Numbering of search results - not 'revolutionary' but useful i can tell you to search for nasa and see the 3rd result. 3. the options menu when you click on the green url. - I can imagine it will eventually include choices for mapping to address on site, site search (via coop) and so on. 4. start typing to search - fixes that issue with firefox where it tries to search and IE where sometimes goes up to the address bar and you end up searching using msn.com

Still no "non-commercial" bit

[Denial93]

Including Wikipedia makes sense. I now rely on Wikipedia way more than I rely on Google for my informational needs, because it isn't cluttered with pseudo-information that has no other purpose other than sell me something. To me, although perhaps not to Google, this is spam and it makes me not want to use Google. Of couse I can exclude pages involving "buy" or "customer service" from my results, but this is an inconvenience and I rarely bother to do so if (more often than not) I can find what I need on the wiki.

And when I want to use Wikipedia, I do not need to go via Google. Google would make themselves useful in a more unique way if they offered optional filtering of sales sites. Let me see pages on Catholic Saints that don't involve "special price" candles with pictures of them, give me information on my car without hundreds of businesses offering to replace it. And when I do want to spend money on the web (which is way less often than the times I look for information), I'll tell you Google, thank you very much.

I don't get it...

[Zaphod2016]

When searching for myself, Google [google.com] and Searchmash [searchmash.com] both show the same images; Searchmash simply moves them to the bottom of the screen where I can't see them.

Images: yes / no / dumb location?

Does Google *really* need user feedback to know this is a dumb layout? Why not move the pics to the empty area in the right margin? Oh, that's right- that's where the ads will go...

Re:yes for wikipedia

[MentalMooMan]

I use http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search =%s&go=Go [wikipedia.org] in opera under search keyword "w". It uses the wikipedia search, which will automatically go straight to the article if it finds a good enough match, or if not, then it'll display a list of articles sorted by relevance. Why rely on google to do it?

Re:Oh, goody ...

[EMeta]

You argument would contain some relevance if not for the fact that many (if not most) of the beta projects are considerably ahead of competing aplications. When maps came out, for example, yahoo's & mapquest were sad little engines, that I was glad to get past. Certainly the gmail beta kick-started some decent webmail from others as well. Now I'm not saying that google's releasing stuff 'early' to help their competition, but certainly it helps end users immensely.

And as far as paying testers? Well, in those previous examples you spoke of, I imagine that software wasn't so much being given out free. I for one am quite happy when some new stuff comes out from a company that can improve my life in some way and they let me use it for free as soon as possible. If you don't like 'testing' it... (gasp..) um, just don't use it. D'uh.

Re:Nice!

[cockroach2]

Oh, and as I'm currently forced to use dialup internet, the javascript updates are *considerably* faster than the good old reload-the-whole-page approach.

Re:feedback on the feedback

[bismark.a]

And lose 10% on your maximum query size?

"space bar for more" is nice

[sunhou]

I often use space bar to page down in my web browser. I like the way, if you hit space bar while already at the bottom of the page, it adds another 10 results to the list, so you can continue hitting space bar to keep looking at more matches. It works for both web search and image search. I hate having to reach for the mouse to get to the next page of results (or using the mouse in general -- it's too slow, compared to keyboarding).

Maybe that's why it uses javascript, which others have been complaining about.

Re:Horrible

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, at some point, you're going to have to take off the tinfoil and enable Javascript if you want to take advantage of all the shiny new tubes.

They are using it to do some nice stuff here, such as expanding a single page arbitrarily instead of generating the usual set of "" index buttons that obscures previous results when you navigate between pages. I like this UI a lot... no more trying to remember how many times I need to hit the Back button to return to a desired result.

Re:feedback on the feedback

[Boiling_point_]

How can I tell them that the images would be really good if they were somewhere else on the screen?

It's very likely that, in addition to a public beta, Google is doing some live user testing on the interface, where stuff like that would be picked up. It's pretty easy to tell if your screen layout is wrong when you watch a few people try to accomplish tasks with it. Learning whether or not people's actual search problems are solved, however, requires huge numbers of test subjects in real world situations like this!

Re:Horrible

[brogdon]

"This site requires JavaScript to be enabled to work. I don't usually complain about that, but every other search engine (including Google) that I've ever used works just fine without it enabled."

The site is essentially a test harness for working on new UI ideas and techniques. Why in the world should they slow themselves down by catering to people who don't want any of the 2.0 stuff the site is engineered to develop?

What's next, you going to complain that it's not compatible with NCSA Mosaic? Just use the regular Google page, FFS.

Re:Requires javascript. Thumbs down.

[Anonymous Coward]

So whitelist it, it's Google for fuck's sake. I can understand wanting to browse securely, but get with the times. Complaining that a site requires JS is about as bad as complaining that it won't work in lynx.