The 4 Google Experiments Review
Personally, Google is my best friend in Internet and I’m glad that they’re doing improvements and new things. Their latest project have been some experimental things regarding the search engine. The project is called Google Experimental Search and it has gained popularity since it was launched.
Google Experimental Search has been a topic of discussion between many webmasters. Threads about it are “flooding” forums. This test includes experimenting on 4 different Beta features:
SearchWiki with Sound
If you don’t know anything about SearchWiki take a look at this video:
It was launched on 11/20/2008 and now are added some very nice sound effects. When using one of the animations a sound comes up (like the sound effects of Windows of Mac). The sounds were recorded by Google’s co-founder: Sergey Brin
Alternate Views for Search Results
In this 2nd Experimental project you can change the way how to view at your search results. Google now has the feature see results on a timeline, map, or in context of other information types. Official Description:
See results on a timeline, map, or in context of other information types. With these views, Google’s technology extracts key dates, locations, measurements, and more from select search results so you can view the information in a different dimension.
Timeline and map views work best for searches related to people, companies, events and places. Info view shows all the data found for each result, to help you select the best choice.
Keyboard Shortcuts
This is an awesome idea by Google Inc. It’s very useful for busy people who waste some time by clicking and using the mouse a lot on Google search. Now with some Keyboard Shortcuts you can make actions by pressing letters in the keyboard:
| Key | Action |
| J | Selects the next result. |
| K | Selects the previous result. |
| O | Opens the selected result. |
| <Enter> | Opens the selected result. |
| / | Puts the cursor in the search box. |
| <Esc> | Removes the cursor from the search box |
Accessible View
After the keyboard shortcuts feature come another very useful one. With Accessible View you can navigate through search results very easily without using the mouse at all. “As you navigate, items are magnified for easier viewing” - is written on the official review.
| Key | Action |
| j or DOWN | Selects the next item. |
| k or UP | Selects the previous item. |
| l or RIGHT | Moves to the next category (results, sponsored links, refinements). |
| h or LEFT | Moves to the previous category (results, sponsored links, refinements). |
| <Enter> | Opens the selected result. |
| / | Puts the cursor in the search box. |
| n | Moves to the next result, and fetches more results if necessary. |
| p | Moves to the previous result, reloading earlier results if necessary. |
| = | Magnifies current item |
| - | Shrinks current item |
| A | Switches to Accessible Search Results |
| W | Switches to regular Web Search Results |
For now, you need to use the Firefox 3 web browser with this experiment. This note will be updated as other browsers are added. Magnification already works with Google Chrome and Apple’s Safari.
To activate any of this Experiments go here: Google Experimental Search. Note, that you can use only 1 of them at a time.
If you find this post interesting or might want to add something take your time and comment here,
Thank you for your time,
Arlind H
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