Google is continuing to experiment with the presentation of their search results. It doesn’t work particularly well, but the concept and initial release of Google views is very compelling. By adding view: to the search query, the results are grouped together in one of a few pre-determined ways:
- view:timeline—The search results are keyed off of dates in the text to arrange them in a chronological order. The outcome is constrained by the quality of the results in the first place, the presence of an embedded date, and the context of the relationship between the date and the keyword. My timeline starts in 1957, for example, because I recently wrote a blog about Sputnik.
- view:map—This view appears to be the most useful in tying a keyword to various places. My shortlist contains Bloomington (my current hometown) and Greencastle (my undergraduate college town) as well as New York and Indianapolis. Most of the locations are about things I wrote about, however, not places tied to my identity.
- view:info—This view has several options in the right sidebar (Your search terms, Dates, Measurements, Locations, Images) to change the search result display to match that particular context. It doesn’t change the results themselves, but it does mask the information that doesn’t match the selected filter. It is potentially useful for extracting images from pages.
