Search Engine Showdown Blog

New Bing Design Being Tested

Some reports and screenshots are surfacing from searchers seeing a new user interface and look at Bing. Like with Google, these user interface (UI) experiments are probably being shown to a small fraction of searchers and responses are being measured. Whether any of the pictured changes will be adopte will depend on how users respond to them.

I can't see either version on any browser that I've checked, but from the screenshots, the main changes seem to be

• Bing Logo in upper left has part of the daily picture behind it in a small square rather than across the whole header
• The search box is more easily visible on the plain color background, but there are few databases listed above the box to switch to (just Images, Videos, and Shopping in one or Images and Videos in the other
• The links in the upper right are styled differently, with the gear icon for preferences smaller and the drop down menu for signing in larger
• Tabs for other databases under the search box are gone
• Another version has no image behind the logo and the database links at the top moved further to the left

Old UI:

New Experimental UI:

New Experimental UI on Right when signed in:

Google Advanced Search Showdown

Big changes are coming to the Google Advanced Search, but they have been intermittent in appearing and we may not yet see the final format. Right before Thanksgiving (here in the U.S.) there were numerous reports of the new advanced search but the appearance differed slightly (some had the descriptive text on the right and some did not, perhaps depending on browser and/or device). There were complaints about the loss of drop down menu functionality, the removal of the link search box, and many other unhappy advanced search users. The change seemed to roll in for most U.S. users at least between Nov. 19-23.

Then Google changed back to the former advanced search on Nov. 25 or 26. I have been checking since then to see if the new version might re-appear, and yesterday in one of my browsers (Internet Explorer 9) it came back (but not yet for me in other browsers or on other computers. At least there are now links at the bottom that mention link and similarity searching, but they just link to a page explaining how to use the link: and related: operators.

The new design looks more like some of Google's other newer designs and is perhaps more similar to a tablet interface. However, when I try actually using the new advanced search page, sorry Google, but it stinks. There are lots of little design and usability changes that make it more difficult to use, and it is definitely less instructive.

    See more »

New Google Interface Forgets Scholar

Tuesday, Google announced a new interface for its front page and search results, removing the black bar at the top with links to other databases and the options gear and moving those choices to a mouse-over, drop-down list that from the Google logo. I still do not see the change on any of my computers at home or on campus, but thanks to a trick posted on the Google Operating System blog, you can make the new interface appear by setting options in a cookie. It sounds like the intent is to make this a common interface across all Google properties. As Google says in the announcement, their goal is "making navigation and sharing super simple for people." (Note the addition of "sharing" which means that Google+ links and notes will be more prominent).

So I tried the new interface and compared it to the old. How well does it work for searchers? The old black bar at the top and its previous incarnations have made it easy for me to switch searches from one Google database to another. The new bar sort of works that way, but it has added several new links (none of which I use often) and removed several others (including those that I do). What has changed?

Some wording is different: "Web" is now "Search" and "Gmail" is just "Mail." But several databases have been removed:

• Blogs
• Scholar
• Groups
• Sites

The gear icon in the upper right hand corner of the home page that links to Search Settings, Advanced Search, and Language Tools is also gone from the new home page design. The Options gear shows up once you do a search. I don't mind not having Sites, since I don't use that, but switching a web search to a search in the Scholar, Blog, or Groups databases is a royal pain. Especially as an academic searcher, the loss of Scholar is significant. The Blogs database is available on the left if you expand the databases, but neither Scholar nor Groups is available there. See the screencast below for a comparison of old and new.

Exploring this change made me realized that Google really offers two places to search images and two places to search video. You can transfer your search from the Image database to "Photos" which gives you the results from Picasa Web Albums without requiring a log in. Note how the Video in the new interface has been moved to the end of the list. Again, you can transfer a search from the Video database to YouTube (for only YouTube videos and different ranking), but you cannot yet transfer from YouTube to the larger Google Video database.

And what's up with the News link? Why does that not transfer the search terms but instead just go to the Google News home page? Clicking the News link in the left margin works properly. Oh well, since I'm using a hack to get the new interface, perhaps these are all bugs that Google will fix before it is fully rolled out. Or so I hope.

App Search Engine Quixey

For the many people (at least in my part of the world) that do not yet own smart phones or run around with iPads or other tablets, the whole app store idea can seem strange way to spend lots of money for what you can already do on a computer. But with so much development occurring with apps, it is good to know what is available. So for those without an app consuming device and for those who just wish to browse the app market place when not on their device, enter App Search Engine Quixey. Still in beta, Quixey is a fascinating place to browse. It has a broad definition of apps and searches within the following categories:

• Android
• Chrome add-ons
  
• Firefox add-ons
  
• IE add-ons
  
• iPad
  
• iPhone
  
• Mac
• Palm
• Web
  
• Windows
  
• Windows Phone

Note that it includes web browser add-ons and general software programs for different operating systems as well as mobile apps. The ability to quickly view just what works on your platform (and for that matter see what runs on other platforms) helps make it easy to explore the apps marketplace.

Additional filters on the left include Price (fee or free), Related Searches, Flickr integrated apps, Apps with reviews at TechCrunch, products at Crunchbase, and Security Ratings from CheckPoint. The search results (the apps) are listed in one column and next to them is a column of "snippets" about the app.

The search technology itself takes a slightly different approach: "Quixey invented a new type of search, functional search, specifically for apps. Unlike other search engines, Quixey doesn't require users to know the name or exact description of that app- all users need to do is answer the search prompt, "What do you want to do?" Quixey produces the most relevant search results by scraping blogs, forums, social media and other sources to learn about each app. Our unique technology for app discovery provides users with search results dramatically better than traditional content based search."

Hat tip to Gary at INFOdocket for the alert to this great new search engine. See the Quixey promotional video below.

New Google News Settings and Source Look Ups

Google News has new search settings available that provide several new features. It lets searchers choose to specify certain news sources for exclusion or from which to get more or less news. In addition, for those news sources tagged as (blog) or (press release), searchers can also request exclusion of those whole groups, or fewer or more from either. While the blog limit has been available in the left hand margin for awhile, there is not other location to limit to press releases or to exclude them (the advanced news search does not have these options). Some are concerned that these new settings will cause users to exclude blogs and press releases (see Danny's comments on this in his Look Out Blogs: Google News Gains Options To Drop Blogs & Press Releases post).

Want to see these settings? Unlike a Google web search, where search settings can be saved as a cookie and do not require the searcher to log in, the new News settings require first logging in to an account. You also must be using the U.S. version.

While I am not yet sure if I'll use any of these settings on a regular basis, there is another great reason to log in and explore these settings. It finally provides a way to search within the sources for Google News. While others have compiled various lists, such as the recent list of sources compiled at Digital Inspiration, they often list sources only by their URL are typically incomplete (I checked four small news sources against that list and found at least one missing). Within the news search settings, just start typing the beginning of a source name (not just the URL), and a list of up to ten potential matches appears. Want to know if a news source is included in Google News? Log in, go to the News Settings, and start typing the first letters of the source name (and try any possible variants as well.)

See below (or check full post) for a 2.5 minute screencast of how some of these options work.

    See more »

New Sidebar Options: Reading Level and Dictionary

Back in December, when Google first introduced its reading level limit on the advanced search page, I thought it strange that it appeared there and not in the "search tools" section of the sidebar since most of the new advanced search features were showing up there and not on the advanced search page. So after complaining about the reading level limit not being in the sidebar at last month's Computers in Libraries conference, and then discussing it with Tasha Bergson-Michelson (a Search Education Curriculum Fellow at Google), I was pleased to see the addition of the reading level limits to the sidebar today. First noticed last Friday at Google OS, it seems to be rolled out to all of the computers and browsers that I'm using.

It has been interesting to watch much of the coverage today, by many who think that the option is new. I guess that does reinforce my opinion that few people notice the options in the advanced search. At least a few more seem to notice it when it is in the sidebar, even though searchers still need to click on the "More search tools" link to see them.

If you've not used the reading level limits previously, just run a search, click on the "More search tools" in the left sidebar, and clicking "Reading Level." This will have the same result as using the advanced search page and choosing "Annotate results with reading level." It will display a percentage analysis of the results divided into basic, intermediate, and advanced levels and tag each result just below the title with a note identifying the reading level of that page. To limit results to just one of the reading levels, click the the level by the bar graph at the top.

Wondering why some Wikipedia articles show up as "advanced" while some university pages are labeled "basic?" Take a look at Daniel Russell's (a Google developer) explanation

Dictionary

Along with the new Reading Level search tool, Google has also added a "Dictionary" search tool. Google has had a long history of connecting search words to dictionary definitions. Searchers used to be able to click on their search terms in the now-gone blue bar at the top. The words (or the definition link) went to dictionary.com and then in 2005 to Answers.com. By the end of 2009, Google was using its own definitions, including automatically generated ones from the web. Now, the new dictionary search tool may retrieve information in these various sections:

• Definitions (probably from Oxford Pocket Dictionary of Current English)
• Synonyms
• Images
  
• Web definitions
• Usage examples
• Related phrases
• Related languages

The fine print at the bottom states that "The usage examples, images and web definitions on this page were selected automatically by a computer program." The Web definitions seem to match the results searchers can get from using the define: operator (compare define:library with the new results). Of course, the librarian in me would like to know where all the other sections originate, and it would be even better to have citations to the sources on the page. For someone looking for usage and definitions, this is a useful source, but if it is a student that needs to cite the source, it is a problem, especially since Google might change it at any time.

The older Google Dictionary which used to be available at http://www.google.com/dictionary seems to be gone (redirecting to the new service), except in a Google cache copy for now and in this screenshot. I'll be curious to see how long the new Google Dictionary lasts.

Resurrecting SearchWiki? Google's Blocks, Stars, and +1

About a year ago, Google killed off its SearchWiki experiment (not long after Jimmy Wales' WikiaSearch was scuttled) and introduced the ability to star results. SearchWiki let users block results, comment on results, and raise or lower rankings for specific pages. With the reintroduction of blocking, the continued use of stars, and the new +1 option, many of the SearchWiki features are back. Will more searchers use these new capabilities than used SearchWiki, and will they last any longer?

Promoting Results: +1

Last week Google introduced a new Google Labs Experimental Search option call +1. Read and see more about it on Google's +1 page, but for now at least, you must jump through several hoops to even see this option:

1. Log in to a Google Account
2. Be sure you have an upgraded Google Profile set up (according to the blog post)
   
3. Go to Experimental Search and Join the +1 button experiment
4. Then search Google and you should (may) see the +1 button after each result

According to Google, +1 is "browser-specific. . . . Also, it may take a while before you see the button in search results, and it may occasionally disappear as we make improvements." While the +1s are potentially going to be public, I have yet to see signs of that. If you have a Google Profile, you can see what pages you have added as +1s in the Profile. But it is very much still experimental. I first +1ed several of my sites from an account in Firefox, after joining the experiment as seen in the screenshot below. The "You Shared This" is separate, coming from sites in my Profile that I set up rather than from +1. If a page is +1ed but not in the profile, it will say "You +1'd this."

Stars and Browser Variance

Today, when I logged into the same account in IE9 (again after joining the +1 experiment), instead of seeing +1, the three sites showed up as starred results and there are no +1 buttons. Clicking the "Starred results for. . . " did not give me a list of any of these sites in my Google Bookmarks, although when I check my Profile, I could see that the +1s were listed, even in IE.

Also, note that while the star appears for the site which I clicked a +1, it does not appear for the next hit. So stars are still not showing up in search results, and you'll need to use another way to add Google Bookmarks. The stars for unbookmarked sites are gone for me in Chrome, Firefox, and IE, and the +1 works in Firefox and Chrome (at least today).

Blocking

As to the blocking, kudos to Mary Ellen Bates from whose March InfoTip I finally figured out how to consistently find the blocking option. You first have to click on a search result and then go back to the Google search engine results page (and be logged in to Google). Google actually stated as much in its initial announcement, "when you click a result and then return to Google, you'll find a new link next to "Cached" that reads "Block all example.com results," but many of us missed that part, myself included. Remember that you add pages to the block list by going direct to the Manage Blocked Sites page without first running a search.

When blocking a site after running a search (on all three browsers) I sometimes see the little explosion cloud that also used to be featured in SearchWiki.

I still do not always see the "Block all . . . " link even after visiting the site and returning, but it appears most of the time. Nor does it appear for a site that I visited recently. In other words, if I click on the first hit, go back to the results, then click on the second hit, and go back to the results, I only get an option to block the second, not the first.

Who Will Use These Features?

Given all the requirements to even use most of these resurrected SearchWiki features (log in, join the experiment, have a Google Profile), my hunch is that (like SearchWiki) only a small minority of searchers will ever even see these options and fewer yet will choose to use them. There is a small portion of users that will at least try these features, as I have, and I hope they find them easier to use than I do. But after trying them, blocking a few very annoying sites and adding a +1 to some favorites, what is the incentive to continue to use features. Danny makes a great case that the +1 is Google's answer to Facebook's like button, but I think that Google needs to find even more compelling reasons to get searchers to use these. Time will tell!

Judge Rejects Google Book Settlement

The New York Times reports on the NY court case that tossed out the "$125 million class-action settlement with authors and publishers, delivering a blow to the company's ambitious plan to build the world's largest digital library and bookstore." The court battles aren't over, but it will be interesting to see what Google's next moves will be. You can also read the decision if you'd like.

On a selfish test note, it will be interesting to see how long the above link to the NYT article will work and provide full text access to the article, given their decision to change access options. Supposedly, "Readers who come to Times articles through links from search, blogs and social media like Facebook and Twitter will be able to read those articles, even if they have reached their monthly reading limit." So I'll be checking the link after March 28 to see.

Block at Last, Once

After several more days of searching Google while logged in and not seeing any option to block, I finally saw it today, once! As you can see from the screenshot below, a search on 'glog' gave me a "block all results from . . ." message for glogster, but none of the other sites listed had the block option. I've highlighted the one I saw and the spot the others should have been. This was in Firefox. I tried several more searches, and none of the results had the block option. When I went back to the 'glog' search, the block option was gone. So I've not had the chance to try clicking on the one block link I've seen so far, but maybe the next one. So is Google slowly moving towards implementing the block option to more users, or do I just get a teaser once in awhile?

Force Block at Google

While I am still not seeing the block sites option at Google when logged in to any of my accounts in any browser, there is a way to force Google to start blocking sites, even if you do not see the "Block all whatever.com results" link after a search result.Since I've not yet seen it, the example Google gives looks like this.

If you don't see that on your results, just go to the Manage Blocked Sites page once you are logged in. You can enter up to 500 sites into your personal block list. Google asks for a reason, but that can be left blank. After entering eHow, I tried a few searches and then found at the bottom of the results, the message letting me know that I blocked a result along with link for showing the blocked result and for managing my list.

I'm not sure how much I will use this, now that I have found a way to do so. First, I do not expect it to last for too long. Maybe Google will keep it for a few years at most, unless many searchers keep using it. Second, if it does last, a site that I block this year may well have very different content a few years hence, and I'll probably have forgotten that I've blocked it. In addition, at this point, the Manage Blocked Sites information is not linked from Search Settings or Account Settings, so I'll need to get a message like the one above to even remind me that it is there (or else I'll have to come back to this point and see if I still have blocked results).

Bing Changes: Tiles, Wikipedia, and Academic

Bing has been experimenting and making changes, some of which do not get announced (like the movement of the cached link). Here are a few changes that I've noticed recently: the addition of tiles, changes to Wikipedia results, and links to Academic Search.

First of all is the addition of Tiles to search results for certain sites. The graphic tile which shows up to the right are only for specific sites with which Bing has identified. The idea is that they can include quick information as well as being a visual tag for the search result to show that it comes from a known (presumably quality) web site. In this example of a search for a restaurant, the second and third hit are from OpenTable and Yelp. Not only are the logos displayed, but the review ratings are summarized and the number of reviews are included.

Try searching a movie or TV show to see Bing Tiles from the Internet Movie Database, Rotten Tomatoes, YouTube, TV Guide, and Flickster. Travel searches may show Tiles from Expedia, TripAdvisor, and Orbitz. Surprisingly, Wikipedia results have no tile. While Tiles are now live, Bing has yet to officially announce them. They are described first in a long interview at SEOmoz from about a month ago. In a later report about the Tiles from LiveSide.net, a Microsoft spokesperson confirmed that these are not sponsored (paid) listings, but that they are partnerships with known brands. They are also not supposed to impact ranking. That reports notes that "the initial partnerships with 45 authoritative sites would be expanded."

Speaking of the lack of Wikipedia Tiles, Bing has several times changed how Wikipedia results appear. Earlier on, there was a "Wikipedia on Bing" version of Wikipedia articles which was linked from Bing results. Called a Wikipedia vertical, Director of Bing, Stefan Weitz comments in the same long interview that "we removed the vertical due to low usage." Wikipedia results are still there, and rank high for many searches, but no Tile or vertical link highlights those links, at this time.

Lastly, if you've not looked at Microsoft Academic Search for awhile, it is worth noting that work on this beta search product continues and seems to have moved beyond its early computer science focus. I came across links to it from Bing when I searched for my friend Gary Price. At the bottom of the search results page is a link to extensive information from Academic Search including number of papers, number of citations, and latest papers, all with links. In that example, it was a different Gary, but take a look at a search like one on the author John Fryxell and note the links at the bottom into Microsoft Academic Search.

I think I'll be taking a closer look at Academic Search in the near future.

Whitelist, Blacklist, Stars Gone, Blocklist

Over the past week has come news of Bing and Google using whitelists, speculations of blacklists, Google's announcement of site blocking by signed in users, and the disappearance of the bookmarking stars which replaced SearchWiki. Just to confuse matters further, depending on which Google version you use, browser version, and apparently the toss of the dice, you may or may not be able to even see some of these changes.

So I'll try to summarize my understanding. First, Danny reports that at the SMX West conference last week, "both Google and Bing said they have "exception lists" for sites that might get hit by some algorithm signals." In other words, some of the spam identification algorithms that find and demote lots of sites in the rankings may also demote sites that were not supposed to have gotten hit. Those sites get put in the whitelist for that particular algorithm. An article from The Register claims that this contradicts statements from Google in certain lawsuits and continues with examples of similar actions that look like site blacklisting.

Most searchers can hope that the blacklisting and whitelisting improves search results and removes irrelevant hits, but if we don't know what has been listed, it is hard to determine how true that is. On the same day, Google announced a new ability for logged-in searchers to block results from specific domains. Don't like see so many eHow results? Just block them all. Or so the the theory goes. Not only must you be logged in to a Google account to have the option, but you have to use Google.com in English with the right browser. According to the announcement on 3/10/11, "The new feature is rolling out today and tomorrow on google.com in English for people using Chrome 9+, IE8+ and Firefox 3.5+, and we'll be expanding to new regions, languages and browsers soon."

Maybe. Karen has some screenshots in her post from a few days later, but I have been trying since the announcement, using the right Google in the right language with several supported browsers and different accounts. Here in Montana, I still can't see it almost a week later. I've turned Instant on and off. I've tried from home and on campus. Still no luck. Comments on Karen's post also note both that others can't see it and that it may go away. On top of that, the stars have been turned off that allowed signed in users to star (bookmark) certain results so that they'd come back at the top of results pages later. The bookmarked pages remain bookmarked, but for now at least, the ability to star new ones has vanished. Or as Barry puts it, you "You Can Hate (Block) But No Longer Love (Star) Google's Search Results." For me, that means I can now neither star or block results.

Blekko: A New Search Approach

My March 2011 Online On the Net "Blekko: A New Search Approach" is up and is even freely available on the Online site. Bear in mind that this was written a few months ago, but I will say that Blekko surprised me, both for the reasons I found to use it and the reasons not to. To summarize, rather than using Blekko as a general web search engine, I really like the ability to use Blekko to research the web itself, exploring link patterns, ranking the data, and even searching my Facebook friends' likes (see yesterday's post). The amount of data that Blekko makes available from the seo link that points to search engine optimization data is impressive, plus Blekko has its own cache and link searches. So if you would like to read more, take a look at "Blekko: A New Search Approach."

Social Search Showdown: Google, Bing, & Blekko

In the past few weeks, both Bing and Google have announced changes to their social searching. With Blekko also having social searching via Facebook connect, I thought I'd compare how successful and useful I found each of the three, and explore the new announcements in a bit more depth. First though, for more searchers, social search may be a waste of time. If you do not have a large Facebook network of friends (or don't use Facebook), avoid Twitter, and have not built a social network, there is nothing to search. Or if you have a large Facebook or Twitter network of friends and family, but you want to search professional topics that are not of interest to those friends and family, the social search results will offer little but amusement, if you even see them.

But if you do have a social network and are interested in searching the "likes" of Facebook friends, Tweets, or posts in Google Reader, read on to see what's new and how to find the social results.

    See more »

How Google Changes Titles in Search Results

Several search engine watchers and forums have noticed how web page titles that Google is displaying in its search results are different than the actual page title. This seems to be a change that goes well beyond the traditional scope of why Google might change the page title (such as a missing title element, a different title in the Open Directory, or malformed HTML.

Over the past few weeks, I have noticed similar issues, and what surprised me was that Google will change the title in the search results for the exact same site depending on the search query. As Christopher Skyi comments (see 2/18/11 comment) "It appears Google is constructing the SERP on the fly as a combined function of the user's specific search query and what's on a ranking page."

Here's an example from my employer, Montana State University. I was checking out the Wikipedia entry which still gives the name of the university of Montana State University-Bozeman (even though the '-Bozeman' was dropped several years ago). Search either montana state university or montana state university-bozeman and the first results is the MSU web site. But the title that Google lists depends on which way you search it. (And for at least the past four years, the HTML title on the page has been <title>Montana State University</title>.)

So for some searches at least, it seems that Google will display a title for a page based in part on some of the words in your search query.

New Way to Search Recipes at Google

Yesterday Google announced the launch of its new Recipe Search which is also been added as another database in the left side bar. Initially, this will only be available on the U.S. and Japanese versions of Google.

Run a Recipe Search or choose the "Recipes" option on the left side, and Google provides specialized search facets on the side for ingredients, cook time, and calories, as in this example from a search for cherry rhubarb.

This should prove to be quite useful to many cooks, but what I find so fascinating is that Google is creating this database from sites that use Google's rich snippets markup which depends on content creators using the special coding on their pages so that Google will include the pages in Recipe Search and be able to better parse the fielded meta data in the recipe.

Searchers: this means that Recipe Search will also exclude many recipes that are not marked up with the special tagging.

How to Find Bing's New Cache Link Location

I love cached copies of web pages for many reasons, but with the consolidation of search engines, the number of sources for a cached page has been decreasing. So imagine my dismay when I noticed the lack of links to a cached page copy at Bing recently. Fortunately, they are still there. The links are just a bit harder to find.

Read the rest of this post and watch the screencast to see how to find the new Bing cache link location:

    See more »

Harder to Sign Out: New Top Toolbar at Google

Last week, Google rolled out a new top toolbar, as confirmed by SearchEngineLand. It is supposed to be few pixels shorter than the older toolbar and is a bit more colorful and interactive.

On the top left side, note the new darker blue bar above the current database (Web in this example). New is a background color change when you hover your cursor over one of the other databases (as shown with News in this example). The old toolbar had no hover color unless you choose something from the "more" drop-down when the color background went dark blue. At this point, only the following databases use the new toolbar:

• Web
• Images
• Maps
• Shopping
• Gmail
• Blogs
• Realtime
  

The old toolbar is still seen at the home page for these (but after doing a search you may see the new one):

• Videos
• News
• Books
  
• Scholar
• Groups
  

Surfing Suggestions for Winter?

For your amusement! (At least, I was amused.) In creating a shortened URL for use with a job posting, I wanted to do a quick Google search to see if my created word has been used by others. So what happened when I tried?

Apparently, Google thought that in the middle of February in Montana, I really wanted to search for 'surfing.' So confident were Google's algorithms that I really had meant to 'surfing' that they decided to give me those results. After all, 4 of the 9 letters matched on surfing. At least, clicking the 'search instead' choice let me find what I wanted to know -- that no one else in Google's current web database was using msurefjob.

Instant Expands

When Google first launched Google Instant, it was not available for all the Google databases. It still is not available in Google Scholar, for instance. Today, Google announced Instant's expansion to Google Shopping (also known as Product Search). See more coverage at SearchEngineLand where Barry notes that "Interestingly enough, this does not seem to work off the Google Product Search home page." It only works at this point after choosing "Shopping" in the left hand facets.

Yahoo! Clues: A New Source for Search Data

Even though Yahoo! is now powered by Bing's underlying search engine database, it still gets a decent amount of traffic. It is also still adding new features and changing its interface. Read more about one recent example in my NewsBreak, Yahoo! Clues: A New Source for Search Data. While it is in its early stages, Clues offer unique information not readily available from other sources.

Google Instant: Interactive Searching

See my NewsBreak on Google Instant: Interactive Searching for an overview of the new, results-as-you-type, display at Google.

Remember Gigablast?

After no activity since 2005, the last several weeks have seen additions to Gigablast's press page. Who? Gigablast is an older search engine that has done some interesting and unique things in the page. It does have its own, unique database. Now it has databases for blog search (last 30 days only) and a Wikipedia search. Also, the main blog search page has a link to the "Most Linked-To News Posts for the Last 24 Hours" along with subsets for several different languages. Gigablast also now claims to be "the leading clean-energy search engine" with 90% of its power coming from wind energy. Strangely, the new "press news" consists of single line statements with no link to a longer story. Still, if you haven't tried Gigablast in a while, it might be time to take a look at yet another Google alternative.

Google Moves Left to Navigational Search Facets

See my NewsBreak on Google's new Navigational Search Facets for an initial evaluation of the nice, new limits and database switching options on the left side of the Google results page.

Some See "View Customizations"

After checking back with Nate and Google and asking several others to help out, I am getting reports that others at least can see the "View Customizations" notice and link. It is indeed down at the bottom of the results, much more hidden than when it was up at the top.

Here's the screen shot Nate from sent me today. Note that this is from the bottom of the search results page beneath the search box along with other seldom noticed links.

I heard from several people elsewhere who also did not see this, including Chris and Mary Ellen in Colorado and Gary in DC, and then later this evening Danny in California and Barry in NYC were starting to see this. I especially like Chris' comment to me that "The new interface doesn't seem to be working on all cylinders yet." He sent a screen shot of the databases section offering "fewer" than none! Maybe we just need to wait a few more days (or weeks?) until the new interface settles down and is a bit more consistent.