Written By Noah Mallin | April 15, 2009 | Share This |

Profile Optimization

The age of the algorithm is over. How’s that for a declarative statement? Of course I’m oversimplifying but the truth is that the major changes in search engine results pages aren’t coming from new or radically improved crawling and indexing. Instead they are occurring through a fresh approach to how results are served up and categorized.

Google is characteristically cautious about messing with their main search tool – after all, they dominate the search engine field and continue to make gobs of money from their current layout – why mess with a good thing?

Well, for one thing Google doesn’t want to slow their momentum and open the door to a resurgence from one of the other engines or the rise of a new one (however unlikely either of these scenarios are). For another, more relevant results organically can lead to better paid search targeting which means more money for scooters down at the Googleplex.

What I’ve found interesting is how many of the controls and displays which might be relevant to Google’s future search results pages are already showing up on the user interface for Google News search results pages.

For instance, in all the drumbeating over when Google will incorporate real time search the closest they actually get to achieving this is on their News page which is already indexed more quickly. Now Google has added a helpful timeline graph that can be used to chart when the volume of articles peaked surrounding the story and gives selected articles from different parts of the graph so the user can determine what may have changed to spur more or less coverage.

It’s worth noting that newspapers and the AP ought to be happy with the orthodox choices Google has made as to who they highlight here – all major news outlets. Were this to move to the general search results page, just imagine the tempest that will be stirred up over how Google decides to pick and choose the sites it highlights.

Google also has another real time search component built into Google News and the relevance of this to their main search tool is even more obvious. This is the event timeline which actually uses data from crawled sites to develop a timeline independent of publishing date. Thus for a Google News search on the term “Pirates” the timeline takes us all the way back to ancient times. Obviously something that happened in 200BC is hardly “news” anymore, but it could be relevant to someone who is doing a search on the main page and is hoping for more encyclopedic results beyond what one might find at Wikipedia.

There’s also the very interesting right side bar in Google News results which packs some features that could migrate to the core Google search tool. There is a local results generator which gives the top locations under the All Sources heading (in this case presumably where the news outlet is located.) Then there is a secondary search box which enables users to drill down by adding a new search term to the mix. This is a great way to allow users to refine queries without re-doing searches entirely or using back and forward button navs.