In November I highlighted a few things that you might have missed in a basic Google search. See here for the post.
Toady, I thought I’d draw your attention to two new ways Google is experimenting with searching. Both these come from their Google Labs department which tries out new technologies for a while before launching them. In this trial period they are useable, but you have to be understanding if they’re not as slick as other applications.
The first I want to share with you is Google Squared. This is (I think) a very exciting way to search for information from multiple sources about multiple (but related) topics. For example, if you’re doing some work on the Wives of Henry VIII, you might want to know all the wives’ key dates (birth, death, marriage etc). You can search for each wife individually and find the information, copy and paste it somewhere before moving onto the next wife. Google Squared is a much cleaner way of doing this kind of search.
If I enter “wife Henry VII” into Google Squared, I get presented with the following table:
Cleverly, Google has built a table around it’s regular search, found common elements in the results and used these as column headings. You then refine your search by removing unwanted results (e.g. Jane Seymour the actor) and changing the column headings (e.g. adding date of marriage). Google then rebuilds the table accordingly. You can then export your results as a CSV file or put it into a Google Spreadsheet.
The second exciting Lab product I want to share with you is a new way Google approaches image searches. Many teachers and students use Google Image search a lot, but the results are based on the popularity and number of links to the images’ associated websites. Great when you want to know what something or someone looks like, but not so handy when you have a particular image or type of image in mind e.g. images of fruit against a white background to use on the IWB.
Google Image Swirl returns a results of a search (e.g. Fruit) showing you the images grouped by similarity. You then click on an image you think is similar to what you’re after and Google then shows you more images of a similar nature. You can repeat the process as often as it allows you to which is dependant on how many images it finds.
Please remember that any Google Image search may return images not detected by your internet filtering settings. Also Google Image Swirl doesn’t yet accept all search items. I believe this swirling idea grew out of Google’s other Lab idea Google Similar Images.
Posted by Spencer 
