Sometime later today, a small number of Google users will see a new look to Google’s Search Options feature. If all goes well, the cleaner display may be launched across Google after the New Year. And it’s all because Google’s vice president of search product and user experience Marissa Mayer doesn’t like jazz.

Simmer down, jazz lovers! Jazz is just not her thing; she’s not making a personal campaign against it. Instead, Mayer was using jazz to explain a pet metaphor she has about search results pages. They have their own “rhythm,” and Google’s results have been sounding a bit free form lately.

“I don’t like jazz, because you never know what’s going to happen next,” Mayer said, continuing on to apply the musical style to Google’s search results. “I’ve been calling this problem ‘user interface jazz.’ This result looks this way, and that result looks that way [something much different], and it really does slow you down.”

Indeed, it has felt a bit confusing with Google lately. When I wrote my Up Close With Google Search Options story in October, after new search option features were introduced, I detailed a number of inconsistencies in how they operate.

I haven’t yet finished another piece about a growing gripe I have, inconsistency in how Google enhances search listings with sitelinks. I never know where to expect them now. They can appear in in any position, within snippets, on a single line and in even more ways. It’s been making my head hurt.

I raised the inconsistency issues with Google cofounder Sergey Brin last month at a press conference, and he said experiments on this were in the works. So now we have a visual sign of that.

Search Modes

Personally, I’m glad if the results will be getting more predictable. But enough generalities. Let’s take a closer look at the changes. Here’s an overview of the new results page in testing (and yes, you can use the screenshots below if writing about this — just link over to our story):

“We’re basically looking at a new look and feel for Google,” Mayer said of the change. “It’s an overall cleaning up of the search results page.”

The search options appear in the left-hand column. The former “All results” area that allowed you to switch between different types of searches (images, news, maps and so on) has been replaced with new tabs for these services:

Internally, Mayer said that Google calls “modes.” For example, after searching for “australia” in the example above, you’re in “Everything” mode (I love this name). But with a click on the Images tab, you can switch to “image mode” and get back image results, select News to get news results in “news mode” so on.

By default, Google guesses at the modes it thinks are most relevant to your search. But the “More” tab gives you access to the full range of search services Google offers. If you Video mode, and that’s not automatically suggested, you can select More, choose Video and get those results:

As happens now, when you switch modes, the search options change. In video mode, you get unique video filtering options such as duration of clip or to see only video in high quality:

New to the search options area in this test is a “See also” section that suggests other queries related to your original topic. As for a search on pizza, Google also suggests things like “tacos” or “fried chicken:”

Interestingly, it doesn’t show more typical related queries that incorporate the main terms, as you can currently see at the bottom of results now for pizza, such as “pizza recipe.” But perhaps this will change.

As the second arrow in the screenshot shows, there are even more search features that you can access by using the “Show search tools” option. Features such as “Wonder Wheel” or “Timeline View” or “More shopping sites” all reside in this area (to learn more about these, see Up Close With Google Search Options).

Google 3D

The most dramatic change in the design is that the search options window is permanently open, rather having to be manually toggled on, as is the case now. That’s right. If the test proves successful, Google’s almost certainly moving to a three “pane” format, with search tools and options located on the left, search results themselves in the middle and ads on the right.

Mayer said going left made the most sense. Google continues to add new search features, and they need to be exposed to searchers somewhere. Putting them at the top of the page pushes results down; ads are already at the right. Having the tools on the left, with the pane permanently opened, is something she said she’s personally wanted for some time, but not everyone in the design team was convinced. The test will be a final proof of how well it works with Google’s audience.

“While I wish we had gotten here sooner, Mayer said, “I’m excited to finally have it out.”

But hey, wasn’t there a search engine that ushered in a three pane design like this not to long ago? Yep. Ask.com, with it’s Ask 3D view that was developed under then-Ask CEO Jim Lanzone. Bing and Yahoo now have three pane designs, as well. So did Ask have it right back then, I asked? And is the three pane view now the industry standard?

“Now you know why I’ve been searching for John Stuart Mill,” Mayer said, speaking of his book On Liberty and how it discusses that universal truths always come through.

“Is it the trend du jour or is that a universal truth,” she said, of a three pane design. “It is a likely universal truth.”

Mayer added that Google had recently done nearly 50 mockups, all done independently, to examine results. A three pane design was a common theme that kept coming up.

Bimodal World Of Screen Sizes

Mayer also spoke to the growth of screen sizes, pointing out that we’re in a “bimodal” world where screens are conversely getting larger on the desktop (and people have more of them) and smaller (as people do more and more browsing on mobile devices). So a three pane view may make no sense for mobile devices. But on the desktop, there’s much more room to spread out than in the past.

“This is a first step. We do think we can add that left navigation and it won’t impact the rest of the page,” she said, pointing out that currently, the actual search results only take up about 1/4 of the screen real estate available for a typical desktop viewer. She also said that Google will do more things in the future to take advantage of larger desktop screens.

What about the navigation bar at the top of the results, which people can also use to switch between different search options such as news and images. Is it becoming redundant as the left-pane continues to evolve?

Mayer said Google would revisit the design of the top navigation links area next year. But right now, it works, moving around “a ton of traffic” to different portions of Google. She also said it’s a helpful way to unify Google’s various properties. Plus, it allows people to go directly to a particular search service, such as image search, without first having to do an “everything” search and then refine it.

Search Button, Meet Search Box

Looking at the new design, I remarked how noticeable it was that the search button is directly integrated into the search box. Consider the before:

And after:

Internally, plenty at Google have noticed the change and not necessarily liked it. “That’s has been one thing that’s drawn the most ire. If the ire continues [from the public testing], that may be one of the first thing that changes,” Mayer said.

She added that Google’s also closely looking at how well the Everything tab and the new Search button work, as illustrated below:

“That big blue Everything on the left and search button on the right, they do pull …. and we do intend to pull the user’s eye …. but I wonder if it’s putting the emphasis enough where we want,” she said.

Fading Home Page Slow People Down

Since we were talking design, I asked about that funky fading home page that Google’s been testing. Is that going to become permanent?

“The fading home page is either going to be reformulated or go into a whole new direction,” Mayer said. People visit it more and do more searches because of the change, she said metrics show. However, ironically, the page also slows them down. They take additional milliseconds to act (and for Google, every millisecond counts).

“Their time to first action is slower,” Mayer said. “It’s almost like they’re disoriented, thinking ‘What? Where is everything?”

That brings things back to the search results page. People like patterns. The more a page has an easy pattern that can be processed — the more “rhythmic you can make it,” Mayer said, the faster she says people will be.

So who sees the changes? About 1% to 3% of Google users, who will be randomly selected. The test will probably run for about six weeks. If successful, expect to see the changes — altered to take in account test feedback — show up across Google soon after that.

Postscript by Barry Schwartz: There are some people actually seeing the new user interface in the wild. Here is a screen shot of what people are seeing:

Just when you thought paid inclusion was finally dead with holdout Yahoo getting out of the space, it’s come back from the most unlikeliest of sources: Google. Below, a look at the experiment plus reexamining the FTC’s guidelines about disclosing paid ads. Does saying “Promoted Videos” on YouTube rather than “Sponsored Videos” meet these?

For those unfamiliar with paid inclusion, it is where advertisers pay to have their listings included within editorial results, rather than being listed separately from them as paid placement search ads. In paid inclusion, there’s also no guarantee that the ads will show in a particular position.

Paid inclusion is a dinosaur left over from the days when you had companies that would sell a search partner only editorial results, leaving it to that partner to outsource with someone else for paid listings. For example, Microsoft once had its search engine using editorial results from Inktomi and paid results from Overture. It is also a remnant from before the days when search ads generated so much revenue that there was no need to deal with “messy” paid inclusion.

Messy? Sure. Yahoo would tell the world how fresh and complete its index was. Yet to site owners, it would pitch paid inclusion as a way to ensure that your pages were getting regularly visited by its spider or not overlooked entirely. It’s also messy to explain to searchers that these paid listings integrated into editorial results aren’t “ads” simply because they weren’t guaranteed to rank.

Paid inclusion is so messy that Google’s founders took an extraordinary step of speaking out against it in their IPO registration document of April 2004 several times. I’ll come back to those statements, but let’s look at what’s happening on Google now

The folks over at Range Online Media spotted new ads that are integrated directly within shopping results. Below are some screenshots they also provided me:

The arrow points to the ads. Here’s another example:

Here’s a close-up of the ad integration:

I can’t see these, when I look at the same pages, such as here. That’s because it’s an experiment that Google confirmed to me is being shown only to a small number of people. These are also separate from the other Google Product Ads rolled out this month to everyone.

I asked about these being paid inclusion. In response, I was sent:

At Google, ads are always labeled to indicate that the information is sponsored. We’re currently running a test in which Product Listing Ads appear on the Google Product Search page when a user clicks to ‘Compare Prices.’ Like the product listings, these ads provide information such as prices and ratings, so when a user sorts the information, the list changes the order of both the listings and the ads. As always, the ads are labeled as advertisements, and this experiment is intended to help us understand whether this is a useful experience for our users. This feature is currently in a limited beta with a small number of U.S.-based advertisers, and as with all tests, we may make changes to our current experiment in the future.

Wow. That made me feel more than ever this was paid inclusion. See, even though there’s an ad label attached to the listings, the fact that they are integrated within editorial results themselves rather than being segregated from them is one sign. In addition, if you can sort the results, then the ads have no guaranteed placement, which again is a core element of paid inclusion.

Now let’s go back to what Google’s founders said about the practice in the IPO papers (I’ve bolded key parts):

Our search results are the best we know how to produce. They are unbiased and objective, and we do not accept payment for them or for inclusion or more frequent updating.

And:

We will do our best to provide the most relevant and useful search results possible, independent of financial incentives. Our search results will be objective and we will not accept payment for inclusion or ranking in them.

And:

Objectivity. We believe it is very important that the results users get from Google are produced with only their interests in mind. We do not accept money for search result ranking or inclusion. We do accept fees for advertising, but it does not influence how we generate our search results. The advertising is clearly marked and separated. This is similar to a newspaper, where the articles are independent of the advertising. Some of our competitors charge web sites for inclusion in their indices or for more frequent updating of pages. Inclusion and frequent updating in our index are open to all sites free of charge. We apply these principles to each of our products and services. We believe it is important for users to have access to the best available information and research, not just the information that someone pays for them to see.

And:

Froogle [the name for Google Product Search back then] enables people to easily find products for sale online…. Most online merchants are also automatically included in Froogle’s index of shopping sites. Because we do not charge merchants for inclusion in Froogle, our users can browse product categories or conduct product searches with confidence that the results we provide are relevant and unbiased. As with many of our products, Froogle displays relevant advertising separately from search results.

At best, Google could excuse the current experiment from being paid inclusion by saying that these advertisers are not being charged to be included. That if they want to be in those listings, that’s free if they put in product feeds. But paid inclusion overall was rarely pitched as a way only to be included. It was pitched as a way to guarantee fast inclusion and constant updates. And the unspoken benefit was that it put you right in the mix of the regular results.

When I spoke further with Google about the move, the company stressed that the ads all have ad disclaimers and that the testing will also look at putting the ads outside the regular results and also may not allow for sorting. What you see above isn’t final, by any measure.

Certainly the ad disclaimer helps, but as long as they’re integrated right in the regular results, with sorting, that’s paid inclusion in my book. It’s also paid inclusion according to the Federal Trade Commission, from its definition in 2002 (again, I’ve bolded the key part):

Paid inclusion can take many forms. Examples of paid inclusion include programs where the only sites listed are those that have paid; where paid sites are intermingled among non-paid sites; and where companies pay to have their Web sites or URLs reviewed more quickly, or for more frequent spidering of their Web sites or URLs, or for the review or inclusion of deeper levels of their Web sites, than is the case with non-paid sites….

In a related matter, I asked why YouTube’s “Promoted Videos” aren’t called “Sponsored Videos,” as they once were. “Sponsored” has been the search industry’s term-of-choice when it comes to indicating what’s an ad. It’s used by Google, Yahoo and Bing, and it was a word the FTC particularly seemed to like when it issued guidelines.

Google emailed me:

Whenever a Promoted Video appears on YouTube, it is marked as a ‘Promoted Video’ to indicate that it is an advertisement. This label is hyperlinked to the YouTube Glossary, which offers more information about the Promoted Videos advertising program.

OK, I knew that. But these were called “Promoted Videos” originally, then changed to “Sponsored Videos,” then changed back to Promoted, which to my ear doesn’t sound as ad-like. So why were they changed?

To that, Google noted a blog post from March saying:

We think “Promoted Videos” more accurately describes this program than “Sponsored Videos,” the original name.

I was also told that “Promoted” was determined to be more descriptive and appropriate.

Determined how? Google wouldn’t share that. So maybe there was some testing done to see if users understood that “Promoted” better explained that these are ads. Or maybe a product team decided “Promoted” got a better clickthrough than “Sponsored” because people did NOT realize these were ads.

Google has massively ramped up where and how it shows ads over the past year. As the company continues to grow, it also has people without a firm history of knowing why ads are separated from search results and why certain words have been used to indicate what’s an ad and what’s not. Calling something “Promoted” that’s an ad in one part of Google while it’s “Sponsored” in another isn’t consistent and generates confusion. Mixing ads into editorial results also potentially generates confusion. Neither makes me feel particular good, but hey, maybe that’s just me.

Google Operating System noticed Google has added a new search option named “page preview.” If you go to Google, search on something and click on “show options,” you can then look towards the button on the left hand side and click on “page previews.” For example, here is a view of a search for apple with page preview selected.

As you can see, Google adds thumbnails of the page directly on the search results.

Page previews is nothing new to search, Ask.com did it with binoculars and there are many Firefox add-ons that add page previews to the Google search results.

On October 6th, we reported on Google’s fading home page, which just showed the user a Google logo and a search box. Then after a gradual amount of time, the search boxes and other various links and navigational elements faded in.

Since then, Google has seemed to test two alternatives to this new home page approach. They tested adding instructions to inform users to “press enter to search” and now they are informing users that “this space was intentionally left blank.” The “press enter” makes more sense to me than the “intentionally left blank” note.

Here are pictures:

In an interview on TechRadar UK, Google’s director of user experience goes a long way toward responding to claims earlier this year that the company’s design team is too reliant on data.

“Data informs decision-making but it’s less useful for conceiving and building conceptually new directions,” explains Irene Au. “It’s most useful for optimising and refining an established concept.”

Au leads a 200-person user experience team that often gets involved in new projects long after the design has started. She tells TechRadar that projects are typically started by engineers, and a developer toolkit lets the engineers “get 70 to 80 per cent of the way there without having a designer involved.”

Au says Google has to be particularly careful with design because of the potential impacts on the company’s bottom line.

“Search is such a fragile interface. It’s humbling to see how the slightest changes in design, just pixel-level changes or barely perceptible changes to colours, can have such a dramatic impact on usage and revenue.”

Well-known designer Doug Bowman left Google earlier this year and fired a parting shot on the way out, saying that the company was too reliant on data to drive its design decisions.

TechCrunch reported that Google is testing a new home page that fade in the various links and buttons after a second or two. Here is the video that demonstrates this limited Google test:

I emailed Google, but have yet to receive a response as to why Google would test this type of home page. I personally do not see how this is that helpful. I do see what Google is trying to do, but making their key areas on the home page stand out a bit more (i.e. the logo and search box), but I think the way this is done, is a bit over the top.

I did spot a Google help thread where a Googler implied this is a legit test. Jaime from Google said:

Many of you may be familiar with Google experiments, you may even have been included in one in the past. We’re constantly testing tweaks — both large and small — to various aspects of Web Search, from its look and feel to new features to “under-the-hood” adjustments we think may improve your Search experience. Well, beginning today we’re running experiments with our homepage itself, and some of you may now be seeing (or will soon see) some changes to the design and behavior of Google.com.

Do you like it? Do you think it is unnecessary? What do you think?

Postscript: Here is a statement from Google on this:

At Google, we run anywhere from 50 to 200 experiments at any given time on Google sites all over the world. Right now, we are running a small experiment of a new Google homepage design that shows links when a user mouses over the screen. This is just a test and a way for us see whether our users will celebrate an even simpler search interface. More information about how Google runs experiments can be found here.

You like it! You really like it! It being the Google Search Options feature that Google added to its search pages back in May, the company says. So as a reward, Google is adding options to filter out (or highlight) pages you’ve visited before, pages that Google’s found in the past hour and a toggle to show more or fewer “commercial” listings in its results.

My companion piece, Up Close With Google Search Options, does exactly as the headline says. It will take you through ALL the Search Options that Google’s offers in great depth, including the new ones. But for those who just want to hear about the latest features, here you go.

Visited / Not Yet Visited Filtering

Follow the arrow in the screenshot below:

See that new section? It shows up if you’re logged into Google and making use of its Web History feature (see Google Search History Expands, Becomes Web History for more about this).

When you’re logged in, you can select the “Visited Pages” option for any search to see only the pages that you’ve been to already via past searches on Google and related to words you’re searching for. You can also do the opposite — filter out any pages you’ve already visited for a particular search, so you can focus on new areas to explore.

More / Fewer Shopping Sites

At the bottom of the Search Options panel, you’ll see the results section:

This area features two new options: “fewer shopping sites” and “more shopping sites.” These do exactly what’s described. Click on fewer, and if you search results had too many shopping results, they go away. Think of it as the Amazonator. Like shopping sites? Well have more of them! Just use the “more shopping sites” option.

Pages From The Past Hour

As the screenshot above shows, a new “past hour” option has joined the existing date filtering choices of past day, past week and past year — as well as the customer date range choice.

Not enough for you? Our Hidden Google Feature: Find What’s New In The Last Minute Or Second covers how to drill down even more. But also see our What Is Real Time Search? Definitions & Players article to understand why what you think is real time might not be — unless you disagree with my view of what real time “content” is. In that case, leave a comment!

Find Books, News & Blogs

Up at the top of the Search Options column links that allow you to narrow results to these areas:

• Videos
• News (Added today)
• Books (Added last week)
• Reviews
• Forums
• Blogs (Being added today)

The ones in bold are new. Books was added quietly last week. News was added today. Blog is supposed to be added today, so keep watching, if you don’t see it.

Forum Sitelinks & Trends OneBox

Along with the new Search Options, Google’s also reminding people about the new forum listings that it added yesterday (see Google Rolls Out Sitelinks Display For Forums) and the Hot Trends OneBox unit that’s been added (see Take That, Twitter: Google Hot Trends Integrated Into Google Search).

And will there be more to come? You betcha, says Google.

“Usage [of search options] has been strong and increasing more and more,” said Nundu Janakiram, an associate product manager at Google, about the changes. “The steady increase in using the tool tells us we should try to add new and interesting features into the panel.”

What percentage of people use the panel? Revealing that data would cause the Earth’s rotation to stop, or the universe to collapse into a black hole, or — yeah, Google’s absurdly paranoid and won’t say. But I’m hoping they’ll loosen up in the near future. But they would say that among the options, the date and time filtering ones are the most popular.

Hey, that Up Close With Google Search Options article that I mentioned? Really consider reading it. It covers the things above in way more depth.

Now that Google Search Options has added new features, I thought it was a good time to revisit how everything works — and in some cases, doesn’t work. Let’s get up close and personal with all the filtering options!

By the way, this is a long article. If you want a digest of what’s new today, then see the much shorter companion piece, Google Adds Visited Pages, Past Hour & Fewer Shopping Sites Filtering.

Using Search Options

The Search Options panel is available after you do a search. Look near the top left-hand side of the search page, just below the search box, and you’ll see a “+ Show Options” link:

After you do this, a series of options will appear to the left of your search results:

Selecting any of these will cause the results to change, based on the filter you choose. Not shown in the illustration above are the Viewed / Not Viewed choices, but those will be explained (and illustrated) below. This article will run from the top of the Search Options panel to the bottom.

Filter By Result Type

The first set of choices allows you to filter the results to show specific type of content:

1. Videos
2. Reviews
3. Forums
4. Books (New)
5. News (New)
6. Blogs (New)

Video Searching

Video filtering was one of the first three filters available when Search Options launched. Select this, and the standard search results are filtered so that only video clips show:

Note that when you do this, as the arrow shows above, you get new “Any duration” filter options that let you further refine the video results to show clips that are short (0-4 minutes), medium (4-20 minutes) and long (more than 20 minutes) in length.

Video Searching Confusion

Like getting video results? Confusingly, the Search Options feature means you now have two different ways to get them on Google, which in turn produce different experiences.

Look at the very top of the search results page, and you’ll see a Videos link in the navigation bar (the top arrow in the screenshot below shows this). This was rolled out in May 2007 with great fanfare (see Google’s New Navigational Links: An Illustrated Guide). Click on that Videos link, and you get results back from Google Videos:

You’d think that for consistency, getting video results by using the top-of-the-page navigational link should bring back exactly the same thing you’d get by filtering for videos using the search options panel. But not so, as I’ve highlighted in the screenshot above.

For one, the ranking of results is different. Using the navigational video link, I got a result on replacing an iPod battery that did not rank in the top results when getting video using Search Options. Also, using the navigational link puts the first video results within a blue border, making it seem like an ad, even though it’s not.

More confusion. If you search for videos using the navigational link, you can still open up the Search Options panel — whereupon you find options that are NOT available if you do a regular search and then filter by video. In particular, the navigational link enables different display options (TV view, list view & grid view), along with options to see only high quality video, to filter by video source site (such as YouTube or Vimeo), to see videos with closed-captioning and more.

There are even more filtering options available for video searching, such as to filter by language or file type. However, to get these, you have to use the advanced search page at Google Videos.

Review Searching

Another filter available at launch is the ability to get back what are supposed to be product reviews. I used the word “supposed” because despite the promise, you’ll still get occasional “review” that can be puzzling. For example, here are “review” results for ipod:

Many of the results lead to good review sites (I’ve marked these “Good!” in the screenshot above). But down there at the bottom of the page? Yes, the web site that will not die — Wikipedia. I always joke that it’s required by law for Wikipedia to be on every Google search results page. Perhaps it really is a law.

I can already hear Google spam czar and all around debunker Matt Cutts winding up a defense. “If you look at the Wikipedia page listed, you’ll see there’s a criticism area and a useful history of the models.” True, but it’s still not what I’d expect when I’m thinking product review.

Neither am I thinking that the manufacturer of a product — in this case Apple — should be listed (twice). I went to both of those pages, by the way. Neither had product reviews.

In the middle of the page, you get a big huge shopping results OneBox unit. Hey, I thought I was getting review listings, not shopping listings!

As it turns out, those shopping results do have a nice collection of reviews, like you’ll see here, gathered from across the web. In fact, those listings seem better than some of the “review” listings that search options was giving me. So why aren’t these pages listed like “normal” pages rather than being confusingly tucked in a shopping OneBox? Why isn’t Google perhaps showing a better display of these (mostly user reviews) somehow mixed or set alongside editorial reviews?

Forum Searching

Forum searching was the third filter available at launch. It works well. You do indeed get back matches from online forums and other places where discussions are happening. Still, I’ve got gripes:

Note that the VMware Communities are both the second and the third major listings. Sandwiched between them are three more VMware Communities threads using the new forum sitelinks display. That’s five listings from the same site in all, showing up in three different places. Surely there could be more consistency here.

Book Searching

Last week, Google quietly added a book filter to Search Options. Select this, and you get back matching results for your search from Google Book Search:

Note that after filtering to matching books, you also get new options to see “Full View” books (that you can read fully online) or to show either books or magazines. The arrows in the screenshot above point to these.

The ranking of results seems to match that as if you went to Google Book Search itself. What’s missing are the many more filtering options that Google provides through Google Book Search’s advanced book search page (such as by author or by ISBN).

News Searching

The news search filter was added yesterday. Select it, and you get back matching news results from Google News Search. The ranking and display is identical, as best I can tell, to what you’d get at Google News Search itself. The main difference is that if you search at the dedicated news site, the Search Options panel changes to provide additional date filtering options and the ability to filter to just news images:

See the year blocks, like 2008-2009 or 1980-1989? You only see these when using search options via Google News.

In either case, there are even more filtering options such as news source or author which only appear if you use Google News Search’s advanced search page.

Blog Searching

Blog filtering is supposed to be added sometime today. As it wasn’t live when I wrote this article, I couldn’t test it. I’d expect it to bring back results from Google Blog Search and for the Search Options panel to reflect some, but not all, of the filtering options at Google Blog Search’s advanced search page.

Date Filtering

Filtering search results by date is hardly a Google innovation. Many search engines offered this in the past. However, it never really seemed to catch on. My personal theory was that most of the time when people are wanting to filter by date, they want to have “recent” results — which means news results. In turn, that means they should be using a news search engine.

Another complication is that knowing the “date” of a page has long been a messy business. Is the date:

• When the page was first published as reported by the web server (sometimes these give out incorrect dates)
• When the page was updated with new material? (such as an article that was written, then perhaps revised months or years later)
• When the page was first found by Google? (which might not mean the page was actually published on or near that date)
• The “date” that might be listed somewhere on a page, such as near the author’s name?
• The “offline” date (such as if an old public domain article from the 1700s is put online)

In most cases, Google tells me the date will be when it first visited the page, though it will try to combine various signals to come up with the best one to determine a valid date.

Date Inconsistency

That sounds good, but it’s pretty easy to demonstrate how messed up the date identification can really be. For example:

The first listing says “Sept. 15, 2009″ but in reality, that page has been on our Search Engine Land site at that exact URL for nearly a year. So, the date isn’t the “first visited” date. If you go to the page, you’ll also see that it has content as of Sept 25, 2009 — so that isn’t a “last updated” date being shown. As for the web server, it spits out a date of October 1, presumably because the page comes from a database. Each time it’s requested, that’s the “date” of the page as far as the server is concerned.

This all means the date Google shows is the date of the last time its spider visited the page. If you view the cached copy of the page, you’ll see the date there is also Sept. 15. However, that’s misleading. The dates on Google’s cached pages can be days, weeks or even months out of sync with when Google last spidered a page to update its searchable index.

The second listing seems to use the date as published on the web page, the date displayed to readers, in order to inform them of when the page was written. But then the third listing ignores that and like the fourth listing, seems to use the last visited date. Then the authored date gets used again, then for no apparent reason, the authored date gets ignored and the last visited date appears.

Date Options

My Finding Search Engine Freshness & Crawl Dates is an older article that goes into depth about issues with dates, if you really want to know more. But despite the fact that dates might not always be accurate, I’ve personally used the filter by date option many times to successfully narrow down results in a useful way. Nor am I alone. The date and time options, Google tells me, are among the most used from those offered in the Search Options panel.

The date options are mostly self-explanatory. When Search Options was launched, these were offered:

• Past 24 hours (results with a date in the past 24 hours)
• Past week (results dated in the past week)
• Past year (results dated in the past year)
• Recent Results (undefined — in one test I did, results stretches back to the “recent” year of 2002. I’m checking on this)

At the end of July, a custom date range option was added, allowing for pages to be narrowed down between a specific period of time.

Today, a past hour option was added, allowing you to find pages dated within the past hour. That not good enough for real time search junkies? Last month, the Omgili Blog discovered a way to narrow results down to the last minute or even the last second, if you’re willing to play around with the URL that shows up after a search. It’s easy and safe. Our Hidden Google Feature: Find What’s New In The Last Minute Or Second covers it in more depth. For the record, Google confirms they work and simply calls them unsupported.

I joked about real time search junkies, but in seriousness, I have a severe allergic reaction to anyone who believes that Google finding a page in the last minute or second means it provides real time search. For me, real time search means finding a particular type of “real time” content. My What Is Real Time Search? Definitions & Players article goes into depth about this.

Finally, let’s have a look at all the date options in context:

The top arrow points to the narrowing options you have. But once you’ve selected these, the bottom arrow points to a sorting option. By default, results are sorted by relevancy. However, you can sort by date within the range you’ve filtered. Do that, and the most recent comes first. There’s no oldest to newest option, which would be useful, on occasion.

Visited / Not Visited Pages

To me, the new Visited / Not Visited Pages filter introduced today seems like a really useful feature. Assuming you use Google’s Web History feature, you can have Google filter out pages you’ve already clicked on from its results or feature those pages and hide those you’ve not seen.

For example, I was looking for information on how to add Twitter to Google Wave earlier today. I’d heard about a program called Twave, so started searching for it. By using the “Visited Pages” option (in the screenshot below, look in the middle of the left column), it was easy to get a list of what I’d been to:

Notice the two arrows to the top right of the screenshot. They point out how Google tells me when I last visited the page listed (me visiting the page, not Google’s spider) and the term I searched for when I clicked from Google’s results through to the page.

All’s not perfect, however. Notice the three arrows further down. Technically, I told Google to do a search for “twave” and then filter out only pages that I’d visited when doing that particular search in the past. So why’s Daggle, my personal blog, showing up? Look at the bottom two arrows. They show I last visited the page on September 12 for a search on “daggle email,” not on “twave.”

The answer is shown in the description. See how I’ve boxed and pointed at the word “Twave.” I wrote a post about Twave on my blog. Google visited my blog, saw that word and so considers it a page I’ve visited before for a search on “twave” simply because that word is on the page — NOT because I actually searched for “twave” in Google and found my blog that way.

I especially liked the Not Visited option:

I can think of so many times I’ve done a search, then realized I was “done” with some of the pages I’d already seen but kept getting them back when I searched again. That was the case this evening, when the pages I viewed didn’t really have the answer I wanted. I need to look at some more.

Unfortunately, most of the other ones I hadn’t visited because I could already tell they were junk by looking at them. Yet the only way to remove them from the Not Visited list is to actually visit them? Ugh.

An easier solution would be if Google enabled its SearchWiki feature when you’re using Search Options. Then you could easily delete pages you weren’t interested in. For some reason, SearchWiki isn’t active when Search Options are used (for more about the service, see my Google SearchWiki 101: An Illustrated Guide article).

Finally, you’ll only see the Visited / Not Visited pages option if you’re logged into Google and making use of its Web History feature. That will have an ick factor for some people, the idea that Google’s watching what you search for and click on. If you’re among them, well, don’t sign in and don’t use Web History. All the other search options will work just fine for you. My Google Search History Expands, Becomes Web History story goes into more depth about the Web History feature. Like really, really in depth. It makes this article seem short.

View Options

Further down in the Search Options panel are four ways to view your search results, all of which were present when Search Options launched:

• Standard view
• Related searches
• Wonder wheel
• Timeline

I’m not going to drop a ton of screenshots and explanations about how these work, because I’ve already done that in my Google Wonder Wheel & Other Search Refinement Features article. Check that out. The only difference is in that article, the “Related searches” option was called “Search suggestions.”

Results Options

Just below the view options area are results options, like this:

It’s confusing, I know. Didn’t we have a filter by results area at the top of the Search Options section? Yes, we did. And isn’t “More Text” a view option. Yes, it is.

The “More text” and “Images from the page” options were present when Search Options was launched. They show longer description for results and thumbnail images alongside results, respectively. That Google Wonder Wheel & Other Search Refinement Features article I mentioned earlier explains more about the options, complete with illustrations.

If it were me, I’d move both of these options into the View Options section. As for the other two related to shopping, I’d put them into that other results options area — the one where you can get news, video, blog results and so on.

Let’s talk about those shopping optons. They’re brand new: “Fewer shopping sites” and “More shopping sites.” I’m sure they’ll also freak out some site owners who’ve long suspected that Google’s wanted to decommercialize (if that’s even a word) its results in order to push businesses into buying ads. And in fact, to some degree Google admitted that type of shift back during the major “Florida Update” of 2003. Not to boost ad sales, of course, but because sometimes people may want less commercial results. Well, now you can overtly drop shopping-oriented sites from your results or conversely, pump them up.

Here are standard results for rollerblade speedmachine, which as you can see are loaded with shopping results:

When I apply the “fewer shopping sites” option, however:

Away go some of the sites, with the boxes showing where new forum threads or blog posts have come in. Shopping results are still there, though kind of sad, I noticed a good dependable store I use personally disappeared. I’d like the feature better if it removed shopping sites with less reputation, if it’s going to leave some in. But I’ve also not done more than a few tests, so perhaps this isn’t the case with other searches.

Wondering what makes a site shopping-like? Google says prices are one of the key signals. You have a lot of prices, you may seem like a shopping store. Google also said things that just look and feel like shopping sites will get flagged. If your using certain words frequently associated with shopping sites, or a format that is commonly seen, that can also be an influence.

Conclusion

Don’t see some or all of the new options mentioned? Remember that for the Visited / Not Visited options, you need to be logged in. As for others, typically with these types of releases, it might take a few days for everyone on Google to see them.

Overall, I like that the new options are more visible, and it may perhaps be reversing the long standing conventional wisdom that searchers simply ignore options when offered through “advanced search” or other links. However, it feels like Google’s been so busy growing the Search Options panel that it’s failing to maintain consistency with the existing advanced search pages for some of its vertical search properties. I’d like to see them consolidate and be more consistent.

The Google Blog announced two new features within the Google search results we have spotted earlier. The first are the anchor based links and the second are the snippet based links. Google Testing Enhanced Listings, “Pagelinks” article from back in December 2008, told us this was coming as well. Here are pictures of both, that clearly describe each:

Anchor Based Jump To Links or Sitelinks:

Snippet Based Jump To or Sitelinks:

Both these types of links take you to the same page of the main link, but they anchor you down or jump you to a specific point on the page. This is done using anchor links within the page source. The Google Webmaster Central Blog explains how webmasters can help gain these links in their snippets. Google explains:

First, ensure that long, multi-topic pages on your site are well-structured and broken into distinct logical sections. Second, ensure that each section has an associated anchor with a descriptive name (i.e., not just “Section 2.1″), and that your page includes a “table of contents” which links to the individual anchors. The new in-snippet links only appear for relevant queries, so you won’t see it on the results all the time — only when we think that a link to a section would be highly useful for a particular query.

As a side note, Google has also been testing what I am calling “deep sitelinks.” This is a combination of date and post data with Google Sitelinks in one snippet.

Fresh off of patenting its home page design, Google is throwing caution to the wind and messing with success: It’s making its search boxes bigger. (Gasp!)

The bigger search box will show both on the home page and on the top of Google’s search results pages.

Google’s Marissa Mayer says the bigger search box is better because the text you type is larger, and the Google Suggest dropdown text is also bigger. Mayer also says the bigger search box is “more fun to use” but I’ve been using it for the last hour and … well … I don’t feel like I’m having more fun. We’ll file that claim under “your mileage may vary.”