Google adds new search result views

by Brad Linder Jan 28th 2008

Google is showcasing three new ways to organize your search results. You can sign up for the new views using the Google Experimental Search page, but you can also access the new search views just by typing some simple strings into your URL bar.

You can access the new Map View by adding "view:map" to your search. Google will pull up web results matching your search term and plot their locations on a map based on information found on each web page. Similarly, the new Timeline View finds web sites containing dates and plots them along a timeline, letting you find just recent result, or results from a certain period, like 1997-1999. You can access the Timeline View by adding "view:timeline" to your search.

The Info View (view:info) is a bit more subtle. At first glance, it looks just like Google's normal search results. But on the right side of the page is a menu allowing you to select, dates, images, locations, or measurements. In this view, instead of simply listing text from a web site below its link, Google will list any relevant information meeting your request. For example, when you select images you'll either get a link to a web page followed by several thumbnail images from that page, or a line reading "No images for this page."

Tags: experimental-search, google, info-view, map-view, search, search-views, timeline-view

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