To go along with their new expanded sitelinks, Google is testing infinite scrolling in Google Search. This new feature will allow you to view all of your search results on one page, but you do have to click a “more results” button. Google has already announced this feature in Images, so there is a chance this could stick around in Search. Google told Search Engine Land, “Google is constantly experimenting with new features.” (Waebo via The Next Web)
Google brings expanded sitelinks to Search
Today on their Search Blog, Google announced a new layout for sitelinks under Search results. The new update brings an expanded look for sitelinks — showing the title, URL, and a snippet of text from the site. Instead of eight sitelink results, a site can now have twelve.
Sitelinks will now be full-size links with a URL and one line of snippet text—similar to regular results—making it even easier to find the section of the site you want. We’re also increasing the maximum number of sitelinks per query from eight to 12.
Sitelinks will also be using a similar algorithm to regular search results, to provide a higher-quality list of links. The update will be rolling out to users over the next couple of days.
More informative showtimes in Google’s OneBox spotted
The Google Operating System blog spotted a revamped interface over at Google’s OneBox that provides a better way to browse movie showtimes. For those uninitiated, OneBox is a way to display information at the top of search results for queries that can be answered instantly or through a direct link, such as weather, stocks and more. You can now click the Show More Movies link to reveal more information and compare movies. Clicking the links takes you to the Google Movies site that provides more in-depth meta data about your selection, including brief description and links to movie reviews, photographs and quotes from sites such as IMDb.
Google News introduces new “Editors’ Picks” feature with human recommendations
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Google News just launched a new Editors’ Picks feature that provides a personal, human touch, straying from the “generated entirely by computer algorithms without human editors” approach of the past.
The new feature won’t exactly have Google employees suggesting their favorite articles, but rather aggregate content that publications have highlighted as being their “most engaging content”. Editors’ Picks will be available initially in the right column of the U.S. Google News page and display content from nearly two dozen publications Google has selected to participate. The feeds you will see in the new feature will depend on your news preferences.
Publications and news organizations can head over to the News Help Center to learn more.
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Google Related is the evolution of the Toolbar
Google today released a new bottom-floating toolbar for Internet Explorer and Chrome users (no Firefox?) called Google Related. They explain it like this:
Google Related is a browsing assistant that offers interesting and useful content while you are browsing the web. For instance, if you’re browsing a page about a restaurant in San Francisco, Google Related will assist you by displaying useful information about this restaurant such as the location of the restaurant on a map, user reviews, related restaurants in the area, and other webpages related to San Francisco restaurants — all in one place.
Whenever you’re navigating to a new page, Google Related will look for interesting related content and, if available, display it in a bar at the bottom of your page. Google Related can display categories such as videos, news articles, maps, reviews, images, web sites and more. To preview a listed item or see additional items, just use your mouse to hover over different categories in the bar. For example, when you hover over a video link, the video pops up in a preview box and you can play the video directly on the page.
This is an interesting move that will likely get a lot more clicks through Google…if it catches on. Read more
Google unveils new search UI on tablets: Bigger buttons, continuous scrolling of image results
The new search layout on the Motorola Xoom. Web (left) and image (right) results. Click for larger.
Google last month announced a bunch of enhancements to its search engine and today the company confirmed via a blog post an overhauled layout on tablets, which the blog Digital Inspirations leaked two days ago. From now, searching on your tablet by visiting the main Google search takes you to an overhauled search results page. It’s surprising it took Google so much time to optimize the search experience on slates, really. You can tell the new layout is easier on the eyes and we are love in love with the bigger buttons. Now you can finally hit the controls on smaller tablets without having to sand down your finger first.
Our favorite: The big, unobtrusive buttons right below the search box for quick access to specific search silos, such as web, images, news and so forth. Also noteworthy, the image search results page now appears way more attractive due to larger previews and continuous scroll – just go to the bottom and a new batch of images loads automatically. The new layout will be available on iPad and Android Honeycomb 3.1 tablets and in 36 languages “in the coming days”, everyone’s favorite search monster noted.
