After removing the useful option to play videos inline*, Google no longer displays the duration and the rating for universal video results. Here's the same YouTube video in 2007, when Google launched universal search, and today. The only difference between video results and regular web pages is that videos have thumbnails and the options to find similar pages and to see the cached version aren't included.


I'm not sure if the rating of a video is very useful, but the duration, the date when it was uploaded and the number of views might be helpful. Google shows similar information for scientific papers, forums and this approach could be extended to other categories of web pages.

* The option to play videos results without opening a new page is available at Yahoo Search.

Google adjusted the interface for video results that are part of universal search. Until now, Google promoted two videos in the first 10 results if the query was strongly associated with videos, but they looked like standard results. The new interface separates the two results from Google Video and this is more in line with other types of OneBoxes (images, local business, news) that evolved into universal search results.

Another change is that the image results group has 4 images instead of only 3 and it can be displayed inside the list of search results, not just at the top or at the bottom. When the image results group shows up at the top of the page, the thumbnails are significantly larger.


Building an universal search engine that manages to rank web pages, images, videos, books, maps turned out to be a difficult task, so Google tries to do something easier: rank OneBoxes for different specialized search engines and display them in appropriate places. You can find a version of Google that doesn't include universal search results at searchmash.com.

Google shows results from its code search engine when you search for things related to programming languages: function names, classes, objects, methods so you can see real-life examples of use. For some reason, the snippets are always displayed after the third search result and they include up to four lines of code.

Google Code Search indexes "publicly accessible source code hosted on the Internet" and is the only search engine developed by Google that supports regular expressions and case-sensitive searches. It's also the only Google search engine that has keyboard shortcuts: after clicking on a search result, type n and p to go to the next/previous match.


Related:
Google Code Search vs Krugle vs Koders

{ via Google Blogoscoped }

A small bit of news from New York Times took a lot of people by surprise: Google experiments with video ads in the search results pages. The intention was announced last year, when Google launched Universal Search, a new format that integrates images, videos, books and other types of content in the main search results and also provides additional information for some web pages. For example, Google shows a thumbnail, the duration and the rating next to videos, while providing the option to play the video inline. This is a big shift from the regular format that only included ten blue links and some small snippets.


Obviously, Google will introduce video ads conservatively, without disrupting the entire experience. The ads will continue to be mostly text, but they'll include the option to play a short video. Google's Marissa Mayer "said, however, that the company would explore adding small thumbnail photos to the video ads as well. And a spokesman said the company is considering testing other formats that may include ads with images."

"The big insight of Google wasn't text ads; it was that the ads should be conducive to the format. We were doing text-based search that was all textual. Visual ads don't work in that format. With universal search, something is getting shaken up a bit on the bottom part of the page. The ads on the top part of the page should match," thinks Marissa Mayer.

Google already experiments with local ads that include maps, addresses and driving directions, mimicking the search results connected with local information. In July 2007, Google's promotion for Bourne Ultimatum included the option to watch a movie trailer inline.

"For us, ads are answers as well" is the phrase that sums up these changes and reflects how difficult is to keep the balance between organic search results and ads. "You will not be distracted by image ads or video ads on Google search results pages. Period. Just because other companies use image ads and video ads with the _purpose_ of distracting users doesn't mean Google will do that. Images and videos can be useful and entertaining, if you see them when you want to see them," clarified Daniel Dulitz in a Slashdot thread.

If you spot a video ad in Google's search results, take a screenshot and post a link to it in the comments.

"With universal search, we're attempting to break down the walls that traditionally separated our various search properties and integrate the vast amounts of information available into one simple set of search results." (Marissa Mayer, May 2007)

Google already integrates in Universal Search video results, books, news, images, local search results and now subscribed links. The next ingredients could be blogs, products, scholar papers and some Google Base verticals.

Even if Google says it ranks results from specialized search engines along with standard web results, this is more like a figure of speech since Google displays groups of search results from Google News, Image Search and Google Maps, not individual results. More likely, Google determines how relevant some image results are for a query and finds the proper placement. Instead of actually mixing results from many specialized search engines, Google includes some of the previous Oneboxes in a controlled fashion. Google adopted a conservative approach in order to not clutter the search results and because it's difficult to compare completely different entities. How to compare some search results for "Christmas" from Digg with a news about Christmas ornaments?


Ask.com decided to separate the specialized results and display them in a column generally used for advertising (like in this search for Christmas). Now Valleywag has a screenshot of a Google experiment that displays the universal results in a separate column.


Does this mean Universal Search didn't work as expected and Google tries alternative interfaces?

{ Thank you, Trey and Jordan. }

One of the best articles ever written about Google is "Google. Who's looking at you?" from the The Sunday Times. The article tries to understand Google's latest projects by looking at what Google really wants to do in the distant future. And while reading the plan, you'll realize that Google's power from today doesn't mean anything compared to the envisioned plans. Here are some interesting quotes, but the article is too good not to be read entirely (my emphasis):

[Craig] Silverstein, now director of technology, explains that, from the earliest days, Brin and Page envisaged a super-connected computer. "The vision of search has always been broader than has been portrayed in the press," he says. (...) He recalls one example that shows that Brin and Page imagined that one day even the smallest "stuff" would be online. "When we were doing the first research, we used to eat in Whole Foods [an organic supermarket chain]. We talked about using search to find out what aisle the salt is on. Instead of having to look at the big signs at the top of each aisle, you could use a search engine to tell you where in the store everything is, and maybe graph it out for you."

Brin and Page were obsessed with recording, categorising and indexing anything and everything, and then making it available to anyone with internet access because they genuinely believed - and still do - that it is a morally good thing to do. It may sound hopelessly hippie-ish and wildly hypocritical coming from a couple of guys worth £10 billion each, but Brin and Page insist they are not, and never have been, in it for the money. They see themselves as latter-day explorers, mapping human knowledge so that others can find trade routes in the new information economy.

Google's plans have three parts: bringing everything online and to make it searchable (universal search), indexing personal information about users (personalized search) and creating new things online using Google's web-based software (cloud computing). The idea is to bring everything online, with various levels of privacy, making it accessible using search and useful from Google's web apps.

Instead of worrying that they are going too far, Google's top team talk, with poker faces, about a "300-year mission" that will eventually see almost everything - including, perhaps, one day you and me - linked to the web and searchable online. (...) Google's techno-dream comes in three bytes. The first is loosely referred to as "universal search". Scribbling frantically on a whiteboard, Mayer, Google's head of search products and user experience, says the web is currently "very limited and primitive". It consists mainly of words, images and some music, mostly created in the last few years. There is much, much more that could - and should - be online. At its simplest level, this includes every film, TV show, video or radio broadcast ever made; every book, academic paper, pamphlet, government document, map, chart and blog ever published in any language anywhere; and any piece of music ever recorded. Google is currently developing new software that will scan millions of new sources of information to give richer search results. (...) Mayer and co argue that to be true to its mission statement of "organising all the world's information and making it universally accessible and useful", Google should be about more than searching for words, images and music; it should be about finding objects and, eventually, people. Any item that can be fitted with a radio-frequency identifier - an electronic tag called an RFID - can be linked to the internet over local or national WiFi networks.

But once you have everything online, how do you link the objects from Google's index with those who need to find them? How do you understand what they want to find if you don't know anything about them? In most cases, the same question shouldn't generate the same answer for everyone.

The second part of Google's techno-dream is "personalised search". (...) Google wants us to sign up for iGoogle on our PC, and also to install it, along with Gmail, Google Maps and Google Earth software, on our mobile phone, so that it knows not just who we are but where we are in the world, 24 hours a day, thanks to the satellite-positioning chips starting to be included in mobile phones. "Our goal is that you can, if you want, search for anything, anywhere, any time," says Douglas Merrill, 37, Google's chief information officer.

To make the information useful, you may need to use it in some context or share it with other people. Google's apps should make this happen from any computer or device connected to the Internet.

The final piece of the Google future is called "cloud computing". Instead of using the internet to search for information that we then copy and use to work on documents stored on the hard drives of our computers, using the software on those computers, Google wants us to create all our documents online, to work on them online using Google's web-based software, and to store them online on Google's vast global network of servers.

By looking at these placemarks from Google's future map, it's clear that search is the most important Google service and every new addition expands the index with more information. It's also obvious that search will propel Google's apps, which become some collectors of search results and channels for communicating them.
If this will happen and Google will become the universal ministry of search and communication, the future will tell. For now, Google seems the only company that has the resources and the desire to conquer the world at the informational level, but that's no guarantee for success.

When Google launched Universal Search, Marissa Mayer was asked if Google intends to include image or video ads. She didn't rule out this idea and said it's natural to see ads evolving in the same direction as the organic search results. In a chat with Gord Hotchkiss, she talked more about this:

"I think that there will be different types of advertising on the search results page. As you know, my theory is always that the ads should match the search results. So if you have text results, you have text ads, and if you have image results, you have image ads. So as the page becomes richer, the ads also need to become richer, just so that they look alive and match the page. (...) So while I do think the ads will look different, they will look different in format, or they may look different in placement, I think our commitment to calling out very strongly where we have a monetary incentive and we may be biased will remain."

At the Citigroup Technology Conference in New York, Nicholas Fox from Google gave an example of video ad for a local butcher that would work better than a standard text ad: "a video with shots of fresh meat and the overall store experience". He also assured us that Google will be careful about user experience and the new ads will be placed only if they're really relevant.


The promo for "The Ultimate Search for Bourne" was probably the most complex ad ever included in a Google search results page: it included a small image and an option to view the trailer inside the same box (the video was hosted at YouTube). Google now also includes big blue buttons next to the ads from advertisers that accept Google Checkout as a method of payment. Another interesting experiment shows the address of the business, a static map and an option to get directions next to local ads.

The main advantages of the text ads are that the page loads faster, they're not obtrusive and blend with the rest of the content which mainly consists of text. Now that search results also include geographical information, images, videos, news and the content is more diverse, the ads could also be richer. Google will probably keep the current text ads and use Plus Boxes to expand the content.

Personalization is another thing that could put the ads in line with search results. "My philosophy is that the ads and the search results should match. [And when it comes to targeting,] search and ads are almost the same," said Marissa Mayer.

At the Searchology event that happened today at the Googleplex (and is still available here), Google talked about the past, the present and the future of search. They explained that search is a difficult subject with a lot of problems yet to be solved, but search is still Google's core competency.

Universal Search

Google launched the universal search that adds news, images, videos, books and local results in the standard results. "Google's vision for universal search is to ultimately search across all its content sources, compare and rank all the information in real time, and deliver a single, integrated set of search results that offers users precisely what they are looking for."

This screenshot shows a video integrated in the main search results and a Plus Box that lets you view the video inline. And in the case of Nosferatu, you can see the whole movie.


New Design

The interface we talked about last month will also be live for everyone. Google adds a horizontal navigation menu to all of its services, but the menu will feature different links based on the page you're currently viewing. Everything will go live in a few hours.




Search experiments

But the most exciting launch for those who try to find all the new Google features is Google Experimental, a new place from Google Labs where you can see new features and layouts tested for the search results. You can play with them and send feedback so that Google makes them better and they eventually become a part of the Google search experience.

As anticipated here, Google tests new ways to view results. "With the timeline and map views, Google's technology extracts key dates and locations from select search results so you can view the information in a different dimension." So you can view the location a page refers to on a map. There's also a timeline view that shows results sorted by the most important dates included in the pages.


Another cool new feature is keyboard shortcuts for the search results. For example, you can navigate in the list of results by pressing j and k and visiting the selected result by just pressing enter. Like in vi and Gmail.

Google also tests two designs: one that places the navigation links and the refinements to the left:



... and one that moves them to the right:



Now you don't have to change your cookies to test new designs anymore, you can just use them from Google Experimental. That doesn't mean Google's random experiments end here: they'll still test features on small samples of users, but those who want to see the new features have a Google site to quench their curiosity.

Searching for meaning

But Google's experiments with search continue. In the next weeks, Google's quality will improve by including results from modified queries that are likely to produce better results.


They'll also translate your query into 11 other languages and show results from these searches if they're relevant. Just in case you search for [French recipes] and the best French recipes are... in French. Using Google Translate, you'll be able to read the pages in your native language. As if everyone spoke a single language.

To sum up

Google's search results will be better because they'll include content from specialized search engines. Google will translate your query to different languages and even slightly alter it to show better results. It will also be easier to navigate to other Google sites and to go to the most appropriate service for your query.

Google's OneBox results (you know, those little boxes from the top of the page that show links to results from Google News, Google Maps etc.) slowly move inside the search results. We first saw these with news and now local results descend in Google's SERP.

Google aims to consolidate the main search results and to build an universal search engine that ranks all flavors of content. As Larry Page mentioned in January, "we are working on integrating different types of results -- video, images, news, books and so on -- all in one place. We are now blending book results into the main index and we will add more going forward. We are excited about providing a truly seamless user experience in search."

For the moment, Google only assesses the importance of the results from the OneBox, but the next step should be removing the OneBox and integrating the results. While it may seem that Google compares oranges and apples, when you search for Travis, you may want to see web pages, videos and their next concerts on a nice map. Like in an encyclopedia page built on the spot and custom-tailored to each user.

As promised last week, Google's web search results integrate results from Google News. The standard news OneBox that was displayed at the top of the page for queries related to recent news was replaced with a list of links to news articles, displayed anywhere in the top results.

The important news will rank higher than less important ones and they become a standard search result. This is the first step in Google's big plan of integrating every type of content in one index: an universal search engine that mixes web pages, images, videos, books, scholar papers, news articles and more.

It will still take some time until the change propagates to all Google's data centers, so you may not see results from Google News displayed as standard results (try to search for news-related queries like Bush, Iraq).

Search Engine Land reports that Google will start to integrate results from Google News with the standard web results. Googlebot is not able to crawl news sites as fast as Google news bot, so if you search for recent events, it's likely you won't find fresh news in the top results. That's why Google used a news OneBox that displayed the top 3 results from Google News for queries that are associated with recent events.


Starting from next week, the news OneBox will be removed and the news pages will become standard web results, "This allows us to rank news according to relevance in search results rather than at top of the page", said Google's Marissa Mayer.

"Mayer said that the changes are a result of new technology Google has developed to dig deeper into news and find truly relevant stories, rather than simply displaying up to three headlines in the OneBox format, which were displayed based on keyword triggers rather than a deeper analysis of news content.

News results will appear anywhere in a search result page, and links to different sources will be clustered together, similar to how stories are grouped in Google News. Thumbnail images related to the news will also appear next to these results."

This change will make Google's results even fresher and it's a big step towards a universal search that integrates content from different specialized search engines and provides a single ranking.

Google promises to change the presentation of the search results. As most people use web search exclusively, they miss a lot of good results available in specialized searches. Google tried to compensate this using OneBox results, but the solution seems a bit artificial, because there's no correlation between the OneBox and the organic search results.

Marissa Mayer says Google really needs to do something about that:

I think we need to look at results pages that aren't just 10 standard URLs that are laid out in a very linear format. Sometimes the best answer is a video, sometimes the best answer will be a photo, and sometime the best answer will be a set of extracted facts.

Larry Page also thinks the current format, adopted by most search engines, is not the best:

Since users are interested in many types of information, we expanded our search index to include new types of content. We added the ability to search for code in more than 40 different programming languages and indexed more than 7 million U.S. patents. Google Video search now links to YouTube content and with that acquisition, over time, we will integrate the YouTube platform with our search engine.

To make this range of information more useful, we are working on integrating different types of results -- video, images, news, books and so on -- all in one place. We are now blending book results into the main index and we will add more going forward. We are excited about providing a truly seamless user experience in search.

Apparently, a Google Universal Search is already in testing. It will be interesting to see how Google can rank heterogeneous pieces of data and do it well.

Latte, a political blog, found in its logs this referrer: http://corp.google.com/~username/universalsearch/modes_v1/usability/rumsfeld.htm. As you can guess, this is an internal Google site. The blog is in the top 10 results for the query "Rumsfeld resigns" (albeit with an April Fool's Day prank), so his author thinks the blog is part of a test for a more comprehensive search engine, that will include fresher results like real-time news.

Indexing pages in (almost) real-time is probably the dream of every search engine. Until that's possible, Google might try to merge some of its indexes and create one interface for all the specialized searches. And that could be Google Universal Search.