If you search for a racing car image on Google search, you get some relevant images. The images are shown by relevancy based on the search query. This means if we are looking for an image of a particular brand, we need to enter the brand name in the search query.
Google has made searching for images a lot more easy by sorting them by subject.
As you can see in the image above, a new option shows up that allows sorting images displayed by relevant and subject. The subjects are displayed separately as different links that allows further exploration.
Next time you are looking for images online with Google search, try out “sort by subject”.
Here is a video by Google, demonstrating the advantages of using “sort by subject”.
Try out the new feature with Google Image search and do drop in your comments.
Today I was playing around on the Google search page and looking up interesting Google suggestions which have always had its funny posts. But Google suggest feature which automatically shows suggestions in a drop down in the search box are quite useful and probably makes its easier for people who do not use search engines a lot.
I came across some direct links with Google suggestions which was quite a first for me. Usually only keywords would appear but type in only ‘Gmail or ‘YouTube’, I came across a direct link. It was behaving quite a bit like a browser with access to history. 🙂
As you can see in the image above there is a direct link to Gmail showing up first on the drop down images. I tried to see which website pull up with such direct links in Google suggestions and very popular websites all showed up with direct links to them in the suggestions.
This basically means there is no need for using the address bar of your browser while on Google if you are visiting a popular website like Facebook, Twitter or Gmail.
I had recently written about Google Vs Bing and fact is these are the innovations from Google which is why so many really use it even if Bing gives almost pretty similar results.
What do you think about direct links in a search box drop down? Do let me know through your comments.
Google is everyone favorite search engine and I’m not sure how many of you really know history behind Google. Here are some interesting facts about Google search engine, which you would love to know.
Google started in January, 1996 as a research project at Stanford University, by Ph.D. candidates Larry Page and Sergey Brin when they were 24 years old and 23 years old respectively.
Googol is a mathematical term 1 followed by one hundred zeroes. The term was coined by Milton Sirotta, nephew of American mathematician Edward Kasne.
The name Google was an accident. A spelling mistake made by the original founders who thought they were going for ˜Googol”.
Google consists of over 450,000 servers, racked up in clusters located in data centers around the world.
When Serge Brin and Larry Page were born, Bill Gates had a nervous breakdown.
Atlantis, Shakespeare’s unknown diaries and Mozart’s unreleased album were found using Google.
The infamous “I’m feeling lucky” button is nearly never used. However, in trials it was found that removing it would somehow reduce the Google experience. Users wanted it kept. It was a comfort button.
Google translates billions of HTML web pages into a display format for WAP and i-mode phones and wireless handled devices.
57% of American kids say ‘Google’ as their first word.
620 million visitors visit Google.com daily.
97% of Google Revenue comes from their advertising services.
Google processes 20 Petabyte of information daily.
As of December 2009, Google’s assets were valued at $40.5 billion.
Google has a world-class staff of more than 2,668 employees known as Googlers. The company headquarters is called the Googleplex.
Google’s index of web pages is the largest in the world, comprising of billions of web pages. Google searches this immense collection of web pages often in less than half a second.
All the letters used in the ‘Google’ word are copyrighted by Google. According to forecasts, Google will buy rights for other letters soon (which made Chinese and Japanese very happy). The company name won’t change, though.
When Google started it indexed 25,000 web pages. Today Google indexes billions of web pages and each time it grows by 10-25%.
According to Google “As the web grows search becomes more and more important”. It acts like a library , the bigger the library the more important is the index.
The biggest break in search came when Google introduced their improved spell checker seen as “Did you mean ? ”.This feature doubled their traffic and soon the developers discovered that the ideal placement was at the bottom of the search results.
Every now and then Google makes small changes and test them with a given set of users. The users aren’t told of this. They are presented with a new interface and the testers observe how the users react to it.
There isn’t any restriction for proper dress code in the Google office. This may include pajamas and even super hero costumes.
Are you aware of all these Facts about Google? Would love to know something which we are not aware about Google. Do share with us, if you have something interesting to share about Google?
Google made it clear to the world that it cares for user security and privacy, by introducing SSL version of its search engine yesterday. It will prevent third parties from intercepting search terms and search results, as a result of the encrypted connection. Currently it is in its beta stage, but one can still make full use of it by using https every-time you perform a search on Google.
And if you are feeling a bit lazy, you can follow the steps below, to make Google SSL as your default search engine on Firefox, Chrome or Internet Explorer. With this, every time you perform a search through browser search box, it will be encrypted. Here we go:
Firefox
1. Download and install Add To Search Bar addon, and restart your firefox.
2. Head over to https://www.google.com. Right-click anywhere on the search box and click on Add to search bar… in the menu.
3. A new window will pop-up which will help you create new search engine provider for your search box. Assign it a name and keyword, and click ok to save.
4. Your new search engine has been created. Make it your default search engine by moving it to top spot in Manage search engines… window.
5. After making it your default search engine, an encrypted version of google search is used everytime you perform search with it.
Chrome
1. Go to “Settings” on top-right corner of Chrome browser and click on “Options“.
2. Click on the “Manage” button next to the list of search engines, add a new search engine provider by inserting “Google Secure Search” in place of name (you can add any name) and in place of URL, add: https://www.google.com/search?q=%s
3. Click OK and make it the default search engine.
Facebook is always in news because of user privacy and another concern which keeps users in dilemma is security. We use lots of anti-viruses, Spywares and tips and tricks to keep ourselves secure. But the shortest way to keep secure is by using encrypted connecting like using https connection.
This is one of the reason I love Google and this is one of the reason people love Google products, because they come up with things which users are enjoying. Google encrypted search is something which is a new beta feature added by Google. Now you can search Google over https connection. You can use https://Google.com instead of http://Google.com now. So now sniffer software like Cain and Abel won’t be of much use.
When you search on https://www.google.com, an encrypted connection is created between your browser and Google. This secured channel helps protect your search terms and your search results pages from being intercepted by a third party on your network. The service includes a modified logo to help indicate that you’re searching using SSL and that you may encounter a somewhat different Google search experience, but as always, remember to check the start of the address bar for “https” and your browser lock indicators.
This feature is enabled for Google web search and not for other features like Google Image search, Google blog search and many more. Just for the info this feature is in Beta phase.
Do let us know your views about this new feature from Google. Are you going to enjoy encrypted search?
We all are aware of the fact that we are addicted to google! And when it comes to google search, we use it regularly whether we are searching for a software or, information regarding a topic. In-short, google is one-stop to find solutions to most of our problems. To enhance the google search results page, here are some extensions for google chrome, that provide increased functionality to the search-
Search Box
ADVERTISEMENT
Search Box extension is a perfect replacement to the missing search bar in google chrome. As we introduced search box it our last post, you must have noticed that it simplifies the way you search on Google Chrome. A simple search box is added where you can create your custom search engine or choose from the available search engines.
Download and Install link for the extension Search Box.
Xmarks Thumbnails
As clearly visible, this extension adds a thumbnail preview to your google search results. You can see the thumbnail preview before entering any website. It also adds a rank to the search results, based on millions of bookmarks on xmarks bookmark sync manager.
This extension adds a colorful tab under the google search bar, which contains top websites related to your search query, grouped by topic. SearchTabs also adds useful details related to the websites such as information about website and their rank based on xmarks bookmarks.
We often spend time clicking on next page, and waiting for it to reload. This extension will automatically reload the next page, while you are browsing the current page. Not only on google, this extension works on all the websites, where you have to move to next page after the end of the content. Give it a try, this will result in enhanced productivity for sure!
Download and Install link for the extension FastestChrome.
WebMynd
This is one of my personal favourites, that i regularly use while searching on google. WebMynd extension embeds results from dozens of websites in form of beautiful widgets on the right side of your search results page. This brings the useful stuff from many websites, on a single web page! Presently in development stage, YouTube, Twitter, Oneriot and Hunch have been embedded into search results.
Download and Install link for the extension WebMynd.
CONCLUSION-
The above extensions can be used individually or all together without any problem. We tested all the extensions one by one, and even tried activating them all together. Everything worked out pretty well. Here is a snapshot of all the extensions activated-
Do you use any such search enhancing extensions? What is your opinion on these extension? Lets us know!
Google Search has inducted another feature which gives the user the option to translate the keyword which is being searched into another language.
If you just type in the query and hit search while on Google.com, you will obviously get a list of results. Click on Show Options. Check within More Options which shows up on the right hand side of the screen, go right down to Standard Results and you will see an option to click on Translated Search.
When you click on Translated Search the Results box appears at the top above all the search results.
Here you have the option of adding another language into which you want to translate the query.
Within those results of the translated query there is an option to Show orginal text which shows the text in the language added.
It supports 42 language as of now, but the only Indian language supported was Hindi.
Below is a video demo on how to use Translate Search with Google.
Google has now added some new options to their search engine. Once you enter a search, there is a link right at the top of all the search results which is ‘Show options‘. Click on that link and the list of options emerge to the left as shown in image below.
Blogs and Reviews.
Once done with the list of search list there is an link to filter the search results with Blogs. That will show results which are related to blogs. Check the image below and see how on clicking blogs it shows all cricket related blogs.
Similarly if you click on Review it will bring up a list of reviews of cricket plans for mobile phones and also a few reviews of some cricket based video games.
Shopping: More and Less
Google is fantastic to look up details for something you want to buy online. But sometimes you want to look up sites which only has related information and not necessarily a site from where you can make a purchase.
Click on More Shopping Sites or Fewer Shopping Sites and toggle the results. As it shows in the image below the moment I clicked on More Shopping Sites it showed search results from where I can buy cricketing gear online. I have highlighted the result.
In the past few months, we have been hearing about Microsoft’s “underground secret-testing” of their new search engine, code-named “Kumo”. Looks like someone’s been working very hard on trying to catch up with (or even beat) the Internet search leaders Google and Yahoo!
Kumo to create a ‘buzz’ in the market
Microsoft is most likely to reveal its “top secret” project – the new version of its Internet search engine to the public sometime next week. Microsoft (through JWT ad agency) is even getting an advertizing campaign ready for the product, hoping to create some “extra” buzz in the market, when they do decide to come out in the open!
Back in the past…
ADVERTISEMENT
In 2003, Microsoft passed up the chance to buy search engines Inktomi and Overture (from whom MS contracted search services) and let Yahoo acquire them. With those under rival Yahoo’s wing, Microsoft was forced to build its own search service.
In 2004, Microsoft launched its own homegrown search engine but MSN search engine failed to gain ground and compete against Yahoo, much less Google.
In 2008, Microsoft attempted $45 billion hostile takeover of Yahoo. When that ended weakly, the company announced it would start paying consumers to use its search engine.
And now comes their very own ‘Kumo’ with a fate still undecided.
Can Microsoft’s search engine beat Google?
I think initially, it will be quite an achievement for Microsoft to match up the levels of Yahoo search. Even with Kumo, Microsoft might still be far from being a “Google killer”.
What do you think? Can Microsoft actually come back with a bang with “Kumo” and match up the levels of Google? Do share your thoughts on the subject.
