SearchMash, Google's experimental site launched last year to test new user interfaces for search results, has a Flash version (requires IE/Firefox and Flash 9). The site uses tabs to let you seamlessly switch between different search engines: web search, image search, Google Maps, Wikipedia search and more. When you click on a search result, you won't open the page as you might expect, instead you'll see a sidebar that shows a snapshot of the page, the snippet and three interesting options: see more results from the site, go to the homepage and read the page from Google Cache.

Google uses snapshots provided by Snap, who also uses them to power its search engine. You may remember Snap from the annoying little bubbles that pop up every time you hover over a link in many blogs, hoping to "enhance links with visual previews of the destination site".

It's easy to move between search results by using keyboard shortcuts (up and down arrows) or the mouse wheel. To go next set of results, you can press Page Down. Unfortunately, it's not that easy to actually visit a search result, which is the main purpose of a search activity. You'll need to either double-click on a result or click on the snapshot from the sidebar. Google will open the result in a frame, so you can't see the URL in your browser's address bar or link to the page unless you remove the frame. Google had to use frames to save the context of your search, but the result is very bad.


For images, Google shows in the sidebar a snapshot of the page that embeds the image, a link to the site and information about the image size. Now it's much more difficult to find the image and you need more clicks to find your way. The video section lets you play videos in the sidebar, but fails to properly indicate the source of external videos and Google continues to host third-party content. The frames from SearchMash team up with Google Video's frames to make your life miserable.


The flashy SearchMash has a list of recent searches, but it's not that easy to find it.

All in all, the Flash interface doesn't bring enough value to compensate for the many usability problems. While it's easy to switch between results using keyboard shortcuts or the mouse wheel, that doesn't justify using Flash, especially if you realize that most people won't know about that. It's also very difficult to link to a search result, the thumbnails are too small to be useful and only slow down the page.

Some things I'd like to see in Google's search interface from this experiment: link to the homepage of a site, search inside a site, keyboard shortcuts for switching between results, a list of recent searches.

{ via TechCrunch }

I was complaining in May that Google Video served content from third-party sites (not from Google-owned sites) in a Google Video-branded player and hosted all the content on its servers. Google changed its mind in June and started to only show thumbnails from the videos.

Apparently, this was only a change in exposing the content, because Google continue to host FLV videos from third-party sites like Metacafe. Searching for [Sunshine Metacafe] on SearchMash, an experimental Google site, you'll notice that, even though all the videos come from Metacafe, the interface doesn't communicate this. The only way to realize that the source of the videos is Metacafe is by clicking on "see larger video". You'll be sent to a Google Video page that shows the original source in a frame.

All the videos from third-party sites are displayed in a Google Video player...


... and they're hosted on Google's servers:


I agree that it's more convenient to host all the videos in the world and play them using a standard interface, but I don't think copyright laws allow you to do that. It's the same reason why Google only shows thumbnails in Google Image Search and sends you to the original site to see the images in full size.

Other video search engines have different ways of displaying videos: Yahoo Video shows a thumbnail and sends you to the original site, Truveo displays the embedded player of the original site, while Blinkx hosts a 30 seconds preview for each video.

SearchMash, Google's experimental search interface, has improved. Now when you type a query, an appropriate section from the right sidebar will expand. For example, instead of showing an image OneBox for [autumn], SearchMash expands the image search section.

Another interesting change is that SearchMash recognizes some classes of proper nouns and displays refinements for them. For "Britney Spears", you'll see these refinements: "songs", "albums", "lyrics", "history" and "influences". Unlike the related searches, these refinements are the same for a category, much like Google Co-op refinements. But Google only adds "songs" or "albums" to the initial query, so it doesn't use tagging like in Google Co-op. Another class of proper nouns is companies.



If you make a spelling mistake, SearchMash replaces: "Did you mean [this]" with "Did you mean [this]? Yes / No", so the suggestion becomes a real question. Also "See results for: [suggestion query]", followed by three top results for that query, becomes "Are you looking for [suggestion query]? Yes / No".


Another new thing is that SearchMash is down most of the time, so you'll have a hard time actually using Google's experiment. But if you'll be patient, you might see the future Google growing in front of your eyes.

SearchMash has a minimalistic interface that removes a lot of artificial elements and wants to integrate all the different kinds of search results into a single comprehensive page.

SearchMash, the experimental site created by Google to improve the way search results are presented, introduced a new video search concept. If you search for "sunrise" or any other query, you'll see a list of thumbnails from the results. Hovering over a thumbnail, you can read the title of a video. Clicking on a search result, the video will open above the search results, along with a complete description. This way, you won't lose the results, and it's easier to see if a video is the right match.




Related:
A playground is found
SearchMash adds more search flavors

Remixing the search results might be the answer for a better search engine. SearchMash, Google's playground, has been updated and now includes results from blog search and video search, which are displayed on-demand in the right sidebar. Now when you choose to see the results from a certain type of search, you can still view the top results from the other search types.

While Google's experiments are interesting, I think a better idea would be to integrate other search flavors into the main index and enable them if the query is appropriate.


Previously in SearchMash:
SearchMash is found (10/02)
Sections make an appearance (11/05)

Google search's playground, also known as SearchMash, has changed from last month.

Each search result page has 3 sections: web search, image search and results from Wikipedia. The sections can be minimized and you can hide the snippets from web search results. The results from image search are placed at the bottom of the page, while the first three results from Wikipedia can be shown if the user expands Wikipedia section.

If you click on "more web results" the next 10 results are displayed instantly, as Google prefetches them.

We can expect to see more sources mixed in one page, some of them by request, some contextually. The idea of having a single result page is not new, but it's a good opportunity to integrate Google's different kinds of searches.

SearchMash is a low-profile site created by Google, that mixes Google Search with Google Image Search and adds some interesting features. The concept is similar to the old A9.

Search results are numbered and you can reorder them. Clicking on the green URL, you'll see a list of options like "cached copy", "similar sites". You don't have click on the search box to type your query. There is no search button, you just have to type enter. Google shows the number of visible search results in the top right corner. Clicking on the "more" link, Google loads a new set of results using Ajax and scrolls to the first result of the new set using a nice animation (this seems broken in Firefox). Actually the entire site uses a lot of JavaScript and Ajax, and it can't be used if you disable JavaScript.

For the moment, SearchMash is a playground for small ideas that could be the foundation of an entirely new Google site. Although this site is mainly for Google testers, it's interesting to see it growing.

{ Found by Pete Warden, who has an interesting site called... SearchMash. Via Blogoscoped Forum. }

Related:
Restrict your search to your favorite sites, soon at Google