Senin, 04 Juli 2011

Redesigned Google Search Dumps Realtime Search and the Wonder Wheel, Temporarily

Google's fresh, new redesign, which is still, technically, in testing though it is being seen by most people at this point, is not taking over without a few casualties. Over the years, Google Search amassed a large number of features and part of the reason behind the redesign was getting rid of some of the clutter. And, since it's in the early stages, some features haven't been built into the new website yet.

A couple of features missing in action are the Realtime search component and the Wonder Wheel. Neither are crucial to the search engine, but are quite important to some people.

"We’ve temporarily disabled google.com/realtime. We’re exploring how to incorporate our recently launched Google+ project into this functionality going forward, so stay tuned," a Google spokesperson told Search Engine Land.

This makes sense, of course Google is going to add Google+ data to its realtime search engine. It may even become a big part of realtime search, which is why Google is redesigning the whole thing rather than just adding a new data source.

In the meantime, it's gone from the dedicated page and also from the vertical search options in the left sidebar on Google Search. Realtime results don't show up among the search results anymore either.

Another feature gone from Google Search, possibly temporarily, is the Wonder Wheel, a rather obscure feature that enabled users to check out terms related to their search in a visual way.

It also enabled users to further explore relationships between search terms, moving away from their initial query. As a search tool, it's mildly useful, it was probably too unknown for anyone to think about it on the rare occasions when they would actually need to use it.

But it could be useful for SEO and SEM, enabling users to see how and what keywords were related. Academic researchers may have also found it useful in some cases. Google has confirmed that it's gone, due to the redesign, but has not said if it's bringing it back.

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