Google's Timeline search: Just add timeline

Google's Timeline feature, a favorite for those of us who like to do real research, can now be accessed by typing the [Timeline] after the terms you are searching for. This works for both historical figures, and with topics that have a significant web history behind them.

So, for example, if a person enters [Apple Computer Timeline] they would get.


One would need to search to the bottom of the page to find:



Then by clicking on the "More timeline results"



For a topic that does not have a significant web history, no Timeline feature is offered.
For example, it no longer works if a person types ["Starbucks Via"] as this new product does not enough history behind it. Take a look at the bottom of the page.



It seems that Google is trying to make the search more intuitive. In that sense, I guess it is reasonable to only show the timeline search when a person requests it directly with a key word.

Google's Social Search- Did it replace Timeline?

Google has recently released its new social search with much fanfare and has justly received much conversation on the web. But (almost?) no one has mentioned anything about the basic disappearance of Timeline.

Timeline was a feature that was in Google labs for at least a year. This past summer Timeline was included in the Show options as seen below:



By clicking on the Timeline link, you were then able to get to the following view:


But now, the Timeline feature is missing:

Now, Timeline is only shown for historical figures, such as Abraham Lincoln, shown at the bottom of the standard search results:




Once you have selected the Timeline option, you can then go ahead and search for something else that is not a historical figure, sort of regaining this great tool.

On Friday October 23 Timeline disappeared from the Show options sections.

On Monday October 26, Social Search was introduced.

So did the new Social Search take the place of Timeline?

Does Google only want to show a certain number of options? Are they concerned that people will not click if they see too much text, much in the same way Google restricts the number of characters in an advertisement?

I'd love to hear your comments and thoughts.

Back when Timeline was part of Google experimental, it could be accessed from the Google Search Bar by typing View:Timeline. I would love it if there was some easy way to recall this powerful tool.

What the LA Times and Tech Crunch Missed-Google site:twiiter.com

A little flurry of debate is flying between an article ran in the LA Times titled: A Twitter Hole Lets You Google Protected Tweets and a response article in Tech Crunch: The New Twitter Hole that Probably Isn't.

The title of the two articles say it all: one side says that there is a way to find protected tweets, and the response claiming that no such hole exists.

Interesting debate.

What fascinates me, is that no one mentions the advanced search technique of using Site Search [site:twitter.com]! We train on this technique, and actually one of our news Skills Application demonstrations is on finding information using Site Search.

There is so much more to searching than just using key words.

Listen in on your customers

Listen in on your customers

Knowing what your customers are saying about your products is valuable to your research and development, marketing, and especially your sales team.
Google has two great ways to listen in on your customers, and only requires three clicks of your mouse to use it.

1. Show Options-> Forums
a. Type in a product you want to research into the Google Search Bar, click search.
b. Then, on top of your search results in the blue bar, towards the left, are the words show options. Click on those words.
c. The options menu opens up. Click on the word “Forums.” This allows you read what your customers are saying about your products.

2. Show Options->Reviews
Same as above, just this time click on the word “Reviews.” This is a great way to see reviews about your products, all in one place.
How does it work?
These features use the Keyword Location filter (full course taught in the Boost eLearning Google Search Training courses) to get great results. Google looks for the word “forum” or “review” in the URL of the web address to limit your results to only those specific types of sites. The same search could basically be accomplished by typing: allinurl:product_name forum/review. With this in mind, you can see how people are using your product by typing: allinurl:product_name uses, or for that matter any other term that would provide high value information.

Of course, you could use this to look up information on a competitor as well.

Easily target your searches

One of the biggest challenges the knowledge worker faces is finding information when searching on the web. With over 1 trillion URL’s indexed, it’s no wonder that finding information is a challenge: there is just so much out there!



Site search is a filter which allows the knowledge worker to limit the results to pages that only come from a specific site. This filter dramatically decreases the area that you are searching within, making it easier to find information. Think of it as follows: a person who does a regular search is searching for a needle in the ocean; using site search is like looking for a needle in a tea cup.

Site Search
1. Type your key words, followed by site:www.companyname.com in the Google Search Bar
2. This search returns information only from that one website.

How it Works
Google indexes all pages, and can return results based on the different sections of the URL. So for example, site search can be used to return results only from specific domain extensions, such as .org (usually reserved for charities), .ca (pages from Canada), or .cn (pages from China).
Or you can research only within a certain group of pages, such as www.ecomm.baxter.com/ecatalog/, which would allow you to search only within Baxter’s ecatalog pages.

Google's Show Options Get Real Coverage

Finally, Google's show options features that have been out since the start of the summer got some coverage today by two substantial sources, Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Blog and Tom Krazit with CNET.

The CNET article is just an announcement of the new features. Nice to see a news source pick up what has been quietly floating around on bloggers minds for some time now.

Danny's article is an in depth review of the joys, features, and frustrations of this new offering from Google. It covers all of the areas covered in the show more features, whereas our post focused on Google's new time features and their benefits to the knowledge worker.

In my mind, what will be really interesting is to watch how far Google goes in publicizing the show options features. You would think putting the link right on top of the results would help, but still, most people we talk to did not notice it was there.

All the effort that Google is spending on the show options feature shows that, as Marissa Mayer said, "Search is an unsolved problem."

With Google's advanced search options, and some training, I think there could be time when we can all feel like search is solved, without resorting to some semantic search engine that would require us to enter a paragraph of text to provide relevant results.