Posted: Sat 19 September 2009

Google Squared – a nod towards the future

Google have released a new ‘labs’ application called Squared. Labs is Google’s testing bed for new creations, such apps that have come out of Google Labs include Gmail and Trends. Squared is a particularly interested app for us at Eazytiger because it is based on future search functionality. Type something into the search box and ‘square it’. It will bring you a range of results in list format. Try “cars” and you can see the results. Try “plants” and you get results for different types of plants. Interestingly the search results are contextualised so columns of data that follow types of plants are different to columns of data about cars.

If you go more indepth then you can add your own columns of data and then save or export the list. With plants I added a column of data called “scientific name” and with cars I added a column of data to tell me when the company who produce the car was founded.

By far the most interesting part of Squared, though, is the semantic nature of the search query. Plants and cars don’t show this at its best but make a search for “singles by the smiths” and the technology understands string you are typing in. This technology means that Google are far ahead of where previously thought, if Google can understand the query you are searching for, it can give you very specific answers quickly. Also if Google can understand your query it will no longer have to rely on keyphrases it will understand a web page like a human and on the fly judge its suitability when a user is making a search.

It’s a very interesting time for SEO’s because the nature of what we do is changing rapidly and if we don’t stay ahead of the curve we will find ourselves out in the cold.

If Google are testing this computer intelligence in Labs then it won’t be long before it gets incorporated into their standard search engine.

RSS the Eazytiger blog for the latest updates.

By: Andrew Gaukrodger
http://www.eazytiger.net
Web design and ecommerce Leicester

||||

• « back to articles