Google Trying On Some New Page Designs

Google's mentioned on their official blog that they are testing some changes to the Google search results. The new features mentioned and shown (bigger screenshots! Bigger screenshots!) include the ability to narrow down results, a relevancy-by-property link list on the left side of the page (Froogle might have the most relevant results, followed by Google News, etc.) and the ability to remove a result from your search (you might remember this option if you've been using Google while logged into a Google account.)

It is amazing to me how slowly search results have evolved over time, especially when compared with the wider variety of ways we can search and things we can search. It also surprises me about how many innovations Google doesn't seem to have participated in. Clustering results, for example, which was pioneered by Northern Light. Gigablast's offerings of a stripped (no-HTML) version of a Web page and result links to the Wayback machine. Any number of sites offering a screenshot preview of a site before you visit it.

Google's API could make a lot of those kinds of results possible, but of course that level of development is beyond a lot of folks. (And consider the fact that Google's API has apparently not been updated since August 2002.) On the other hand, maybe their continuing relationship with Firefox will mean that Google will become more and more customizable through Greasemonkey and other Firefox extensions. There's already GooglePreview and I'm sure plenty more I don't know about.

It just makes me wonder where/if Google will draw the line, perhaps by saying something like "We have developed the search engine results page to give you everything you need. What you make out of it now will be up to Greasemonkey innovations and after-delivery customization."

Posted to Search Engines-Google