From the Google Labs: Google Experimental Search

I do a lot of researching online, both for work and for play. When recently involved in a heated debate about what year The Simpsons first aired, prompted of course by the recent movie release, I impressed my dinner guests by knowing my way around the Google Experimental Search offerings.

Once we decided to settle the debate and look it up online, one of my friends went to Google and typed in the question of the hour, What year did the Simpsons debut? and was rewarded with the following search results:

When that didn’t immediately answer our question, I typed The Simpsons view:timeline and impressed my guests with the following Search results page:

Once the question was answered and I explained how adding view:timeline to any search query on Google produced a timeline of results and how adding view:map would produce a map of results for any search, we were able to have dessert and move along in the conversation.

I actually find the timeline view that Google offers in their Experimental Search offerings (found right in the Google Labs) to be useful on many levels. Here’s how it works:

You type in any query at all followed by the refinement view:timeline and are presented with a graph at the top of the results, illustrating the number of results related to specific years. For the Simpsons example, Google presents search results between 1986 and through 2006. Select a specific year in the timeline, for example, 1990:

and you’re taken to a new search results page restricting your search to that specific year alone like this:

Google’s timeline view really comes in handy at times. I discovered that if you follow any search query with “timeline view” you get the timeline view as well. For fun, try the following Timeline Searches on Google:

Google Timeline view:timeline (a fun result to see)

Google view:timeline

Yahoo view:timeline

Ask view:timeline

It’s important to remember that view:timeline produces a timeline of search results, not an historical timeline. So when you search on Harry Potter view:timeline it’s not magic that gives the 2009 result. It’s a search result listing that happens to include the 20-acre theme park called Wizarding World of Harry Potter that’s scheduled to open at Universal Orlando in 2009.

If you want to look for a more historical reference timeline, try Google’s News Archive. Google’s news archive gives you a look back at the Google news articles and includes an option to view the results sequenced by date.

I forget that not everyone works online and devotes as much time as I do to searching on search engines and following the latest news, trends and algorithm changes in the search landscape. So, in case you weren’t aware that you could produce handy timelines of results easily in Google, now I’ve impressed you, too.

Read WebAdvantage.net’s recent tips about other Google Labs offerings in
Searching Search Histories, which discusses Google Trends
and Yahoo Search Suggest, which discusses Google Search Suggest.

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