Analyzing Searchmash - the experimental Google

A closer look at the current Searchmash features

1. Start typing! - This feature lets you type the keyword/s and hit enter key to view the results. Is this a normal behavior of a visitor to hit enter while searching in google rather than press the Search button? Probably the answer is ‘yes’! Google must have tracked and noticed this behavior and introduced it here. Of course it speeds up the process. At least I do that as I enjoy the freedom of not hitting the ‘Search’ button every time I search something. Currently Google has the ‘Search’ button but anyone can just hit enter to proceed.

2. URL menu - Currently Google.com displays the links to Cached and Similar pages just beneath the respective search results. One can just click on the links to view the last indexed page and the sites that are considered ’similar’ by Google respectively. Some more links like ‘More from this site’, ‘Translate this page’, etc. also appears time to time. At Smash if the visitor clicks on the green url three options appear: Open in new window, Open cached copy, More from this site.

   • It has always been a guess game whether the visitor wants the link to open in a new window or the existing one. The bulk of them has always preferred to open the link in the same window. This new feature is for the rest. Mind you Yahoo already has this feature.

   • The other two links are actually helpful for the web masters. But for a normal visitor cached page is a great resource to see a page that might not be opening. While similar pages are a great way to find related results. So the links are intentionally hidden from the SERPs to make things simpler.

3. Image results panel - This feature is introduced to display related images. At Google.com we need to click on the link named Images and then search for an image. What is the usefulness or the tentative purpose of this feature? We need to wait and watch

4. Wikipedia results panel - When you search something at Searchax you are going to see related results from the wikipedia (the online encyclopedia) as well. The overall value of wikipedia is always increasing to the internet users and Google realises that too. So now on you need not go to wikipedia to see the search results.

5. Hide details - This is a common feature now a days. At google.com you need to set the number of results to display in the Preferences page or browse other pages for more results. This newly introduced feature makes the whole process fast and easy. So you need not go to the preferences page every time to choose how many results to display. Again there is a keyboard shortcut (space bar) for this feature. Over the time we are going to see some more keyboard shortcuts at Smash I guess. Webtips too have this feature enabled in the home page to let the visitor choose to read the full story, minimize it or simply delete it.

6. Usage of Java script functions to determine user behavior - If we take a look at the source code of the default homepage, we can see a couple of javascript functions like handleKey() and handleIdle().

   • function handlekey() - In the homepage just below the searchbox you can see this message .. ↑ type one or more search keywords to get started. Now once you start typing this message changes to .. ↑ hit enter to get results The handlekey() actually determines if the user has started typing or not and displays the messages accordingly. This seems like a step by step guide and we can expect to see more messages in the days to come.

   • function handleIdle() - This function determines if the user is idle for a specified amount of time. Currently if the user sits idle for 30000 milliseconds, this function is executed and you get to see messages like .. ↑ not sure what to search for? try exploring popular searches. The popular searches link leads to a random search result like mariah carey, floyd landis, images:che guevara, images:marilyn monroe (image search results). I guess the results are taking the help of Google zeitgeist and the random results are going to be determined according to the country. So if am sitting in India I may see sania mirza or aishwarya rai instead of mariah carey. This is something nice and I feel the adwords which are missing from Searchmash serps are going to play a key role soon.

We can clearly see some experimentation going on. Its is a learning searchengine. But is this going to be the next generation Google.com with a touch of the old a9.com .. a more Web 2.0 compliant Google? Lets wait and see.

Things we might see soon getting introduced at Searchmash

Here we are going to predict what may be introduced at Searchmash.com Google always welcomes user feedbacks and it asks for the same at Searchmash too. Lets submit our online feedbacks through this post. So leave your thoughts to let Searchmash(aka Google) know what do you feel.

1. I predict once we do a normal search we may see a link to the top related searches for better results. Like if you search for ‘books’ you might see search terms like ebooks, amazon, blah blah in the top related searches section. This can be an introduction of something similar to tag clouds which is gaining popularity day by day but with more refinement and relevancy.