Google unveiled a great deal of new features to Universal Search, as well as some exciting discussion about Google Mobile Search and Android capabilities at Searchology today, which was offered via live webcast.
Google Search Options
With Universal Search, we experienced the wonder of blended search, but what if you only want to view videos or forums? What if you only wanted recent content? Google’s search options allows you to do this. Now when you search, you have the further choice to “Show options…”
Here you can only view certain types of content (though I find these to be a little “sparse”). You can view by how recently it has been created exactly like Google Blog Search. You can alter the amount of information in the results. You can also view timelines and a Wonder Wheel (picture below). The Wonder Wheel is interesting, it’s sort an automated brainstorm.
I think it will be interesting to watch the reaction to some of these, especially the view more text option which virtually makes it unnecessary to click to the web page.
Google Rich Snippets
The also introduced Google Snippets at Searchology. Snippets allow for even more relevant data to be presented from within the search results. This is of particular interest to search engine optimizers as these must be added by the web page creator. Webmaster can accomplish this by including structured data.
And more…
In addition, they demoed Android capabilities, in particular with the new Sky Map which allows for finding stars in the sky using GPS. The phone will actually point you to the stars you want (does anyone else see the romantic possibilities?)
Google Squared was demoed too, but this will not be released for another month from Google Labs.
How can we use this?
There are many implications here for the multichannel marketer. Google rich snippets is easy to implement but likely has a great value in helping users finding information about products or services on the web. Here one can include price ranges, review ratings, brand information.
Google Android has many exciting features that multichannel marketers can make use of. GPS capabilities integrated with other data has the potential for many different applications.
Is the future now, or is the future still the future?
It has been foretold that the social web would be replaced by the web as a database, and Google today has pointed us in this direction. What we see the ability of the user to manipulate the data on the web. During the Q & A session you get the sense that while it seemed that we were nearing the end of all that could be achieved digitally, the most exciting things are yet to come.
I highly suggest watching the entire webcast.
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