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Filed under: Design, Developer, Internet, Productivity, Google, Beta, Search

SearchMash now comes in Flash flavour

SearchMash now comes in Flash flavour
After quietly launching SearchMash as a test ground for all things search late last year, Google is making the site a bit more Flashy.

SearchMash is a playground of sorts for Google to experiment with interaction and the display of search results. Now they have taken their simple search philosophy to the limits and added in a Flash interface for a more interactive look at results.

The new interface uses Snap previews of websites before they are visited and tabs that seamlessly switch between web, image and video searches. Keyboard shortcuts and mouse scroll wheel interactions have also been put into place for quicker navigation. A list of recent searches is conveniently hidden on the left side, with a portion of a window slightly sticking out. When moused over, a tray slides out and display the keywords. Not the best placement and surely not something that the average user would know where to mouse over. Then again, we have to pinch ourselves because this is after all just a test search interface for Google to play around with. Of course the HTML version of the site is still available if you aren't inclined to search with Flash.

What do you think of this little Google experiment. Would Flash interfaces fly for search efforts in the real world?

Filed under: Design, Internet, Web services, Google, Yahoo!

Yahoo cleans things up with the Alpha search engine

yahoo alpha searchYahoo is fighting hard in these search engine wars, and seems to be quite frequently releasing new and interesting goodies for web users. This new entry into the market is a fresh looking search tool called Alpha.

Yahoo Alpha takes a clean approach to searching, and closely compares to Google's Searchmash. Searchmash provides users clean results, with associated image, blog, video, and wikipedia results. The new Yahoo Alpha gives users results for Flickr photos, YouTube videos, News search, Wikipedia entries, and also gives users the ability to see sponsored listings if they choose, all in a nice contrast to Yahoo's busy homepage.

The cleaner the search application the better. The more that clutters the space, the more users get distracted and frustrated with the whole searching experience. Yahoo is on the move with this; now let's see who wins the battle for the new search landscape. What do DLS readers prefer, the new Yahoo Alpha, or Google's Searchmash?

Filed under: Developer, Internet, Web services, Google

Google rolls out SearchMash with little fanfare

SearchMashA few days ago, Google quietly launched SearchMash. Of course, you wouldn't know by looking at the SearchMash web site that it's at all related to Google, but that's where - surprise! - Google comes in handy. Thanks to everyone's favorite search engine, I learned that this same search engine recently registered searchmash.com and a bunch of related domain names. I also came across this post at Search Engine Journal that attempts to cast some light on SearchMash.

SearchMash is being touted - among those who know of its existence in the first place - as "Google 2.0." It's currently in the "sandbox" stage, so feel free to check it out, play around with the new features (including plenty of Ajax, of course), and spread the word around the blogosphere.

[Via Search Engine Journal]

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