Google Labs Tests Google Squared

[engine]

Google Labs Tests Google Squared [googleblog.blogspot.com]

Google Squared is an experimental search tool that collects facts from the web and presents them in an organized collection, similar to a spreadsheet. If you search for [roller coasters], Google Squared builds a square with rows for each of several specific roller coasters and columns for corresponding facts, such as image, height and maximum speed.

For your delight
[google.com...]

[Robert Charlton]

This is one of the new Google features that was announced at Searchology Conference on May 12, 2009 and mentioned in this thread...

New Google Features Shown at Searchology Conference
[webmasterworld.com...]

At that time, the tool wasn't live in Labs. It organizes data in tabular form, and allows you to add and remove rows and columns. In an initial brief trial today, I often felt that instead of wanting to add or delete rows and columns, I either wanted to sort them, or to refine the search. The tool is clearly a work in progress.

I suspect Google Squared is going to arouse the same kind of concerns among webmasters that Google Definitions did initially, and that is that if Google is essentially aggregating deep content, it's going to be siphoning traffic from its sources.

The tool represents a direction in the use and display of information that is inevitable, IMO, but one for which society currently doesn't have a good model.

See discussion in a related area on this thread...
Pros and Cons of Rich Snippets and Microformats
[webmasterworld.com...]

[youfoundjake]

I, too, felt that I wanted to sort them, and refine the search as well. The first time I searched for http status codes, it hit right off the bat, but lacked any reference to 200 or 301 or 302, but brought up some others I didn't know about. This was of course after I played with it for awhile to get a feel on how it works, and then I could customize my search accordingly..
Once it becomes kink free, and more intuitive, I fully look forward to playing with it..

[webfoo]

This has potential.

I searched "dell computers". I expected it to bring a spreadsheet of all or some of dell's PCs, comparing hard drive, ram, processor, usb ports, monitor options, etc.

I got one result with two or three pieces of information.

Not impressed for now, but this is a great idea and will improve.

[carguy84]

Definitely needs sort.

I see this working very will with ecommerce in the future if they can figure our the correct columns to display by default (Eg. "digital slrs" - name, photo, description, megapixels, card format, MSRP)...

[supafresh]

Digital Cameras has a decent results set.

adding
Reviews shows only results from amazon.com
Lens showed the f ranges

Cool stuff

[goodroi]

it is definitely interesting. on one hand i am scared about the implications and on the other hand i am fascinated with the "potential" uses. i place emphasis on potential uses since my initial test of this left a lot to be desired.

it is extracting data from multiple resources and that is leading to bad data. for example in one row it gave me a company name, company description & company address which i thought was great until i realized it had jumbled together three different companies and represented them as one company.

[LifeinAsia]

Great for doing homework! An elementary student can get all the information needed for a report on the planets one one page with just a few clicks.

I'm wondering how long before teachers start getting screen shots of it for homework assignments.

[sgietz]

Very cool!

[Seb7]

They could use this sort of data to create their own Wolfram Alpha site!

[caribguy]

Great experiment! Looking forward to being able to drag / sort columns and rows, and form sub-squares (drill down) based on a selection of the data that is presented.

All we need now is good data ;) Attempted to build a simple comparison of economic indicators for various countries, quality of the results is pretty spotty. I have a feeling it will pick up fast...

[Robert Charlton]

All we need now is good data ;) Attempted to build a simple comparison of economic indicators for various countries, quality of the results is pretty spotty. I have a feeling it will pick up fast...

Google is absolutely brilliant at leveraging user behaviour, and I suspect that the input they're getting from how the tool is used is one of the ways they're going to improve it.

[httpwebwitch]

Try a search for "pokemon", and look at the information that appears beside "poison".

And what's with the "add your own" feature... is this just a 2-dimensional wiki?

A great idea, but honestly the results are embarassing. They should not be showing this in public yet.

[Vimes]

hehe,

i was impressed to see that we had five listings for my domain name.

so it gets my approval :p

Vimes.

[Dominic_X]

I'm surprised it saw the light of day.

Yes it drew in info from my site on related searches but not in a way that would have helped the user.

Thumbs down from me.

[tangor]

Quackery in progress... odd results. Crafting rows and columns produces some very strange results (ie. searching for a fictional character often portrayed in films, books, audio, in different countries, over many years) put odd images, disparate descriptions, and links to films, books and audio what were not about the fictional character. Either needs work or is for amusement purposes only.

[gpilling]

on some ecommerce searches it produces catalog like results. Maybe even better than Google shopping does.... now how do I optimize for it?

[graeme_p]

Interesting, but it does not produce useful results for a lot of searches, and the sources are not checked.

For a lot of the sort of searches for which this might be useful Wolfram Alpha is better: I just tried "GDP" on both and the results were exactly what I wanted, vs completely useless.

[driller41]

I notice that if you follow a link it opens up a new window, so people are herded into staying on the google site, this sort of thing is not good for the webmaster, google scrapes our content then attempts to remove our income