A while back I did a post on alternative search engines, which can sometimes help you get the results you want faster than Google can. As evidence, though, that Google itself is interested in alternative ways to search the web, the company has announced an interesting set of new, experimental search tools. You can try them now.

The new experimental search approaches range from timeline- and map-based ways to present search results, to new keyboard shortcuts, to results that include alternative keyword suggestions and relevancy rankings. For certain kinds of searches, they do appear to save some time and produce better organized results.
The first of the experimental search techniques that I tried was the new Timeline Search option. I searched for Thomas Jefferson and got back a timeline of dates and related hyperlinks for Jefferson as seen below. This, Google’s Experimental Search site claims is a good way to do research on a particular person.

Next, I tried the new Map Search option. I searched for Bioinformatics Conferences and got back a map view showing me the locations of upcoming conferences, as seen below, along with my search results themselves to the left of the map. The Google site suggests doing a similar search for PGA Tour.

The Google Experimental Search page also offers up a new way to get alternative keyword suggestions when doing searches, and a number of keyboard shortcuts. You can, for example, use your J, K and O keys to jump around in your search results.
There are also new left-hand search navigation and right-hand search navigation techniques, which allow you to refine or expand results and restrict your actions to the left or right side of your results pages.Using these, when I searched for iPod, I got photos of iPods, an open Wikipedia entry for iPod, and various new ways to navigate results.
Google has also started a discussion forum for sharing ideas pertaining to the new search techniques. Give the new ideas a try. After all, we web workers spend a great deal of time searching.
What are your favorite web search timesavers?
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