Google announced its new Search Options feature for Google Search. Now, instead having to visually sift through page after page of search results, you can, as the Google execs say, “slice and dice” your results.

Search Options:

Genres: When you click on “Show Options” (see image below) the first category of slicing and dicing options are what I call genres . You can show All Results, which is the default, or just the Video results, Forum results, or Reviews. Hardly a comprehensive list of genres (how about Blogs?), but it’s a useful start. It’s also in keeping with Google’s principle of keeping things simple, which I like.

Time: The next category is time. You can further narrow your search by showing the results from the beginning of time (default), or the past 24 hours, the past week, the past year, or what they call “recent results,” whatever that is. In addition to genre and time options, there are options to include more images or more text in your results. Personally, I’m thrilled about the new time span options. I usually type in the year when I want the most recent results, but that often results in old info from sites with a recent date in the footer’s copyright. From my unscientific study of the time sorting options, Google’s algorithm for date sorting is a better than just the regular search results with a date added manually into the search query text.

Wonder Wheel:

I’d be happy with just the above new search options, but Google has gone further and added a couple of bonus options. The first, and coolest (and when I say cool, I mean useful), is the Wonder Wheel. If you’ve ever used mind mapping, then you’ll understand the Wonder Wheel. Type in a query for something like “DIY Solar Power” and you get a central hub or node with the spokes radiating from it. In the center node is your search query and the spokes contain the most likely results. How about an example, you say?

I like energy efficiency, and I’ve been wanting to build my own solar water heater panels, so I did a search for “DIY Solar”. Normally, I’d make my search more specific, something like “DIY Solar Water Heating Panels”. With the Wonder Wheel, you don’t have to be so specific; you can start with a simple, general query and the Wonder Wheel will get you to the specifics faster than trying to exert your own Google Fu prowess in the first search query.

The image below shows the result of my general search “DIY Solar”:

Right away I can see several more specific suggestions on the spokes radiating from the hub,  most notably, “DIY Solar Hot Water Heater” at the 10 o’clock position. Clicking that node, I get this result:

The node “Passive Solar” at 2 o’clock caught my eye, so clicking that I get the result I need: info on building passive solar water heating panels.

Could I have achieved that result faster using a regular text query? Probably, but I use Google every other minute so my Google Fu is strong. Other folks who don’t use Google all the time may find the new Wonder Wheel becomes their prefered search interface.

But search speed isn’t everything. One of the best things about the Wonder Wheel is that its visual format of a hub with branching spokes exposes you to a wide range of possibilities in a very concise format. For example, in my DIY Solar search, I was exposed to solar technologies and alternative methods and materials that I might never have encountered in a regular text search. If you are researching, I can’t think of a faster way to cover ground than using the Wonder Wheel.

Timeline:

The timeline feature is more cool than useful, at least for me. Timeline shows you the frequency versus time of your search query. For example, here’s the timeline from my passive solar search:

As you can see, there was a spike in the use of passive solar during the time of the first energy crisis, then a lull, then a resurgence in interest in the term in our present day. Once again, if you were doing research for a report, this could prove to be an invaluable tool for illustrating specific concepts.

Rich Snippets:

Rich snippets are RDFa or Microformat markup code that gives Google very specific information to display in their search results. Currently, the technology is still being tested with sites like CNet.  Basically, this is a method to give more useful and precise info to Google search users. Up until this moment, Google has been a passive system; that is, it reads the info on my websites without my help. Now, with Rich Snippets, site owners will be encouraged to tag their content so Google can find the best, most informative bits.

I like the idea of this, and not only because it uses the open technology markup formats, but because anything that helps cut through the clutter is good. On the other hand, my cynical side sees this as boon to those who can afford to tag all their content, and a detriment to those who can’t. Will Google give preference to sites with rich snippets? Only time will tell.

Links: Google Searchology’s video and slide presentation about these new features.