One of the more exciting recent search engine advances I’ve seen in a while is Google Squared. Search for something which has multiple attributes and Google will try to build a structured table of results, adding columns for each major attribute it knows about. As an example, try “Hitchcock films”.
Did Google miss a film? Just add a row and Google will try to fill in the missing attributes. Is a film attribute missing? Just choose from a column suggestion Google offers or specify it yourself and Google will try to find the data. Does a data element seem amiss? Hover over it and Google will display the data source along with alternative values. In the Hitchcock example, one film was reported with the re-release date rather than the original date; a click or two later and the correct date appeared.
Google Squared is not suitable for every query
Google Squared works really well for well defined domains of data. If the domain definition, the search query, is open to multiple interpretations, Google Squared results will logically suffer. As with standard web search, I believe that over time users will become rather savvy in forming their queries. The need for query refinement won’t disappear completely though, something Google accounts for with a “Not finding the right items? Start with an empty Square.” link.
Not all information lends itself to table representation. Ask Google Squared to try to force results with limited attributes into a table and it will happily oblige, but as the old IT adage goes, garbage in, garbage out.
Not yet ready for everyday use
Google Squared is still very rough around the edges, as Google readily acknowledges. I would like to be able to sort and/or filter on one or more columns. It would also be nice to be able to save the table in a spreadsheet format, such as OpenOffice Calc or as a pdf. Currently you can save your search query, including modifications, but only if you tell Google who you are, a privacy no-no. Once the G² query is saved, you still cannot do much with it. The current table structure does not even lend itself to a poor man’s cut and paste. But let’s not quibble, Google Squared is clearly promising.
Is Google Squared Useful?
Google has built extreme flexibility into Google Squared, allowing users to update individual table cells, insert new rows and/or columns and remove those which aren’t pertinent. This user editing functionality is really useful for the occasions that Google must rely on unstructured web data and isn’t able to deliver a “perfect” result.
One might argue what good are the search results if they require lots of user intervention? Google provides a structured tool to piece together often disparate data found on the web – much quicker than doing multiple searches and pasting results into an OpenOffice Calc or similar spreadsheet. It is also a safe assumption that Google Squared results will improve over time as Google notes user feedback (the manual updating of tables) to improve its knowledge of a data type query (Google is data and feedback driven).
Should one make important decisions based on this data? No – Google Squared is not a substitute for human complied data. Yet by providing sources for each of its data cells, Google Squared can facilitate the process. Google seems to be relying upon multiple websites as data sources for data within a query, thus avoiding the Wikipedia syndrome where one site has a monopoly on the best answer. This is also very promising Google, kudos.
Where’s Google Squared data coming from?
While Google seems to imply they’re doing the heavy lifting of structuring unstructured data found on the web, the job shouldn’t always be so hard. Google has Google Base, a structured online database repository from which it can, and probably does, pull data for the search results.
Google has also discussed how it is crawling / scraping the deep web to find the rich information, often highly structured from databases, hidden behind web forms.
Business Implications
Any business with a product catalog or other structured data should be considering how Google Squared can be woven into their SEO strategy. If this isn’t clear, try a search for ipod.
Surprisingly, The ipod search results weren’t perfect for such an obvious geek query; I got a “Diagram” column without data and I needed to add a “Capacity” column.
If you rely on ranking reports, they will need to be updated to take Google Squared into consideration should G² start appearing in the standard Google web results.
Wolfram|Alpha?
The Google Squared announcement comes on the heels of the release of Wolfram Alpha, a search engine Danny Sullivan calls an “fact engine“. Wolfram|Alpha pulls disparate data on a topic together, in a way perhaps not too dissimilar to The World Almanac and Book of Facts. Where possible, Wolfram|Alpha will display multiple dimensions of the answer, as in a query for florence (nice answer) or cranberry. Yet WolframAlpha’s corpus of data is much more limited to Google’s. In the case of Cranberry, there was no news of the band by the same name. Wolfram has little to say on Hitchcock Film, although it did offer me information on the Hitchcock last name.
Google Squared Not yet International
Google Squared works best for English language searches. I tried forcing the issue, searching for albums by the Italianissimo pop singer Tiziano Ferro. The results, in Spanish or English, seemed to be from North American websites. Nothing showed from Italy. A search for the Berlin folksinger Klaus Hoffman also yielded mostly North American results albeit with one German site, www.magistrix.de, cited. Since Google Base accepts data from Germany in addition to the US and UK, this seems to imply that G² is not yet taking advantage of all of the structured data Google knows about.
To be certain, Google is also doing other cool things like the wonder wheel. Yet the wonder wheel is just a take on clustering, something many others have done for a long time. Google Squared is something to get really excited about.
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4 responses so far ↓
1 David Hopkins // Jun 12, 2009 at 1:01:50
Had not seen this. Certainly need a lot of tuning? When I typed in, “what is the answer to life?” it told me that it was ask.com. It is also bringing up Australia as the 10th smallest country.
2 Sean Carlos // Jun 12, 2009 at 7:24:10
@David I’m afraid the query “what is the answer to life?” wouldn’t lend itself to an answer composed of a list of items with many attributes and thus, as mentioned above, falls into the category “garbage in, garbage out”.
As for the query “smallest country”, I’m also seeing that… is “Australia” a synonym for “Andorra”?
3 ?????? ?????? // Jul 28, 2009 at 17:17:46
Hi, great post and interesting info for the readers.
I was not familiar with that feature. I am going to try this , since Google Squared might provide a soution to some of my complicated searches. tanks for sharing!
4 Nair Satheesh // Aug 20, 2009 at 19:31:45
Google Squared appears to be similar to my patent application:
Frankly, I am getting a Déjà vu effect while going through the “Google Squared” application because it appears to be very similar in function to my United States patent application which was filed on April 12, 2007 and as publicly disclosed by the United States Patent and Trademark Office on October 16, 2008, when the patent application was published.
My patent application is titled as “Method And System For Research Using Computer Based Simultaneous Comparison And Contrasting Of A Multiplicity Of Subjects Having Specific Attributes Within Specific Contexts” bearing Document Number “20080256023” and Inventor name “Nair Satheesh” which may be viewed at http://patft.uspto.gov/ upon Patent Applications: Quick Search.
Google Squared appears to be using at least some if not many of the same methods and systems as set forth by me more than two years ago in my patent application. In fact there are many more methods and systems disclosed in my patent application which I believe will help resolve certain inaccuracies found in current Google Squared application.
I have issued legal notices to Google through my Patent Attorney in the US but Google has not responded yet to any of my notices.
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