Google heads for universal search

Stephen Withers
Thursday, 17 May 2007 03:43

Your IT - Home IT

Search engine giant Google has begun a process aimed at unifying its multiple search services to maximise users' chances of finding what they were looking for by combining web, book, image and other searches into one set of results.

"Our focus has always been making our users' search experience as simple and straightforward as possible," said Marissa Mayer, vice president of search products and user experience at Google. "The ultimate goal of universal search is to break down the silos of information that exist on the web and provide the very best answer every time a user enters a query. While we still have a long way to go, today's announcements are a big step in that direction."

While Google's "universal search" is still a work in progress, the first changes can already be seen. For example, the first page of results for a search for Mickey Mouse are bookended by a small selection of images and a few items from news archives. And a search for Darth Vader yields parody videos, photos, and information about actors Dave Prowse and James Earl Jones, as well as official and unofficial information about the Star Wars character.

Thumbnails are presented for video results, and YouTube and Google Video items can be played without leaving the results page.

According to Google officials, the company's ranking algorithms have been adjusted to compare different types of information, and a "new technical infrastructure" is being deployed which apparently allows universal searches to be performed without requiring the processing power needed for multiple specialised searches.

"The level and speed of search innovation at Google has increased. Most of this innovation addresses basic ranking algorithms and is often not obvious to users. Users just see more accurate results, more often, in more languages, which is our primary goal," said Udi Manber, vice president of engineering.

Other changes to search results include a set of dynamically generated links to suggested searches (eg, darth vader sounds) and specialised searches that may be appropriate. The results for python proffer specialised searches within blogs, books, Google Groups and code, but if the search is for whale, the list is images, news and video.

Curiously, the first page of python results from a universal search contain one item related to Monty Python and the rest are for the python programming language. At the time of writing, Google Australia still has 'classic' search, and generates results that also include items about snakes. Which do you think is more universal?

Universal search should be deployed right across the Google network by the end of the day.