All new Google search Options

[Opix]

English language Google searches are now showing the following

[list]

[*]New "Froogle" link.

[*]New "More" link to......well more google stuff.

[*]Highlighted search phrase in url. even when embedded in url !

[*]Sponsored listings design change.

[*]Search phrase linked to dictionary.com ?
[list]

Point 3 has quite an impact on domain name selection, no more hyphenation ?

[Jean_Manco]

See also Google Directory demoted: effect on ODP.

[bwelford]

3. Highlighted search phrase in url. even when embedded in url !

Well spotted, Opix. I'm particularly intrigued at the item quoted. Bolding in the SERP's does indicate that these elements were taken into account in their search, as per the Google Help pages on the text in SERP pages.

J  Text Below the Title
This text is an excerpt from the returned result page showing your query terms bolded. These excerpts let you see the context in which your search terms appear on the page, before you click on the result. If Google expanded your search using its stemming technology to include variations of your search terms, those words will also be bolded.

The Google item on stemming technology is unchanged since last November. So it's not really stemming but rather looking for similar meaning phrases.

However now if words run together in domain names, Google in this case looks for the "stem" elements and correctly parses them.

[Mike521]

this stemming thing still seems a bit sporadic to me, or I'm just not searching for words that are stemmed often, I guess.

I just did a search for "rock climbing". The #10 result, rockclimb.org, had rock bolded, but not climb. Why is climb not a stem of climbing? I guess they just haven't hit all words and all stems yet, or don't always factor stemming into a search.

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navc...q=rock+climbing



edit: ah ha -- on page 2 there is a description with climb bolded, result #16. interesting.

[bwelford]

That new Google Search page is really very stylish. The More link shows many of the other ways you can use Google to search. It's very impressive.
One surprise for me is that they don't show the Google Deskbar there. You've still got to search around in the Google Lab for that. However I use it even more than the Google Toolbar. It really is a very useful device and takes so little space.

[Jean_Manco]

Here's the full story on the new features:
http://www.google.com/press/pressrel/enhancements.html

I'm off to try personalised search.

[Jean_Manco]

That was fun. Love the way that you can see the effect of personalisation on the SERPs by moving the slider.

[raj_freind]

Google also make some changing in their database

[jackson992]

I like the appearnce of the changes. Now if they could just fix the problems of "The Ides of March"

[Mike521]

love the personalization. it'll be interesting to see what effect this has on seo once it catches on, not just in google, but also in yahoo and msn in a couple years.

[jackson992]

I wish Google would go back to using SEO:)

[bwelford]

Well I've looked at that Google Personalized Search and it left me unimpressed. I really want more. So I've set down some thoughts in my Blog today. It's one of today's entries in the Cre8tive Flow Blog. It's called "Newslet #2 - Google, I want to search WITH you!". You can also get there directly by clicking here.

[Mike521]

I just did one test the other day and I was very impressed. I entered rock climbing as one of my interests, then did a search for "gear". I did another regular google search for gear to test against.

When I slided the personalization bar over, all of my results were much more relevant towards rock climbing gear, mountain gear, outdoor gear, etc.

The non personalized one had some climbing info, but many non-climbing results.

I didn't do much more testing than that though, or go into more complex keyword phrases.