Google Experimental Search
January 30th, 2008
Take a look at Google Experimental Search. They’re offering five experimental features to enhance your searching: alternate views for search results, keyword suggestions, keyboard shortcuts, left-hand search navigation, and right-hand contextual search navigation.
I tried two. First, the keyword suggestions:

For a librarian, this wasn’t a very interesting option.
Next I tried alternative views. This was nice:

Once again I searched for “gold rush,” and although it’s hard to see in the example above, with the timeline view, you have a visualization of the 19th century and its related gold rush activity. I think this will be a nice aid for the students in our California Gold Rush class.
What do you think?