google.com/ie - now going to Exporer upgrade page

[webdude]

Did I miss this? I used to use google.com/ie a lot with 100 returns per page. This was a good way to display results without descriptions. Aslo a good way to search for your position through tenss of pages. I noticed this went away a while back and was wondering if there was an alternative to get the results from Google like before.

Call me dumb, but it's been a while and I cannot find any info on this.

[tedster]

We had a short discussion about this change a month ago or so. Yes it's gone, and yes, I miss it. I've not found any alternative either.

[Fern]

I never used google.com/ie... but if you want to see 100 results displayed, add "&num=100&pws=0" to the end of the url for you search query

[tedster]

The big deal about using google.com/ie for search was that you could get linked titles only in your results - no descriptions or other distractions. Very handy in some situations. I just got a tip about how to get the titles-only SERP. Even though the old page at google.com/ie now redirects, the search parameters it used to generate are still working.

Add &output=ie to the query string for the URL of a Google SERP, and there you have it. A page of linked titles with no descriptions or other interface complications.

[Robert Charlton]

tedster - Thanks for that. That's a very handy tool to have back again. Those serps also display numbers, which are very useful for reference.

I just played around with it a little. While I generally search plain vanilla google.com at the default of 10 results, I like the ie output to show 100... so I combined parameters...

&output=ie&num=100

Once you're in the "ie" interface at a given number of results, that interface seems to hold the old ie?q=&num=100 settings and you can use it for other searches.

A search for more info about the google output parameter, btw, leads to this, which doesn't mention "ie"...

Google WebSearch Protocol Reference for Google Site Search
http://www.google.com/cse/docs/resultsxml.html
[google.com...]

http://www.google.com/cse/docs/resultsxml.html#outputsp
[google.com...]

The output parameter may be fertile ground for other useful display options.

[steveb]

[google.com...]

&output=ie&num=100 is now just showing a regular search page. I guess they want to kill the ie search after all.

[tedster]

Curses, foiled again! Time to get a script written, I guess.

[mkassets]

For me, the value of the ie interface went far beyond a mere convenience of the concise SERPs display. Here is why.

My flagship site has to do with a particular electronics widget. The widget is kinda special in a sense that it usually takes a professional or a very tech savvy person to choose the right model and install it.

As a result, the top sites in the niche are usually very content rich, detailing all the intricacies of the widget selection and usage, and also devoid of the large electronics retailers that usually offer catalogues of thousands of products but poor or no content.

I remember the times when the Google's 1st page of SERPs correctly reflected the best sites in this niche..... But then came the era of artificial boosting of the big brands. And so BestBuy, Walmart and few other giants, entered the first page for the most searched keywords in this niche, usually at position #3 and #4 and sometimes 1-2 more positions near the bottom.

The IE interface, however, has NEVER been affected by this. It didn't show any of the big brands till the day it was gone. It offered a special window into the true, the "fair" state of the index, presumably considering the objective parameters only.

And I guess that's the reason Google wanted it to die, I don't think Google had a problem with the display format

[webdude]

That didn't last very long. Funny how fast G picked up on that and squashed it. I wonder what the reasoning would be?