Google Simplifies the Search Interface

Google Simplifies the Search Interface

After a few months of testing, Google released a new search interface that removes the left sidebar and replaces it with a much simpler horizontal bar placed below the search box. A similar UI was launched last year for tablets and last month for smartphones, so Google tries to offer a consistent user experience.

While the old features are still available, the advanced search tools are no longer displayed by default. You need to click "search tools" and pick the right option. Google used to display some relevant search tools and the old interface made it easier to find recent results. Now you need 3 clicks to find results from the past 24 hours instead of only one click (sometimes two clicks). Another issue is that it's much easier to accidentally click the ads when you're using the search tools.

"With the new design, there's a bit more breathing room, and more focus on the answers you're looking for, whether from web results or from a feature like the Knowledge Graph. It's going out to Google.com users in the U.S. to start, and we want to get it to users in other languages and regions as soon as we can," informs Google.

Google Simplifies the Search Interface

Search All Google Services Simultaneously

When you want to know all the information Google has on any topic. 

Or type your name in and see the ultimate vanity search results.

www.wdyl.com 

What do you love?

Track a plane flight on the Web

Can I track a plane flight on the Web?

I always get the airport early, even when my children's flights end up being late. Makes me crazy, but I hate calling up the airline status update computer because I hate talking to automated systems like that. Blech! Is there some way I can check flight status online?

---

Dave's Answer:

The phone-based flight status system? I haven't used one of those for eons, I didn't realize they were still an option!

Fortunately, my sister's flying in to meet me in Southern California the day I got your query, so it'll let me demonstrate some of the many super cool ways you can track a flight online nowadays, without ever leaving the comfort of your home!

The easiest - and this might surprise you - is that you can just do a Google search for the flight. Enter airline and flight number, and it'll show you that flight's status.

For example, my sister is on Alaska Airlines flight 582, so that's what I type into Google:

Looks good. Looks like she's on time and scheduled to land in about 45 minutes, 7 minutes early. Which reminds me, I need to go pick her up!

If I finish this blog entry up first, however, :-) I'll instead click on the link shown and get a bit more information, from the site "flightstats.com":

Very cool. Even cooler, though, is what the site flightaware.com can show, because it can place the plane over a map. Look for it as one of the other top matches for your airline flight update search on Google, click on it, and:

Even better, there are all sorts of other stats that the site can display about a particular plane flight:

And just for completeness sake, I went to Alaska Airlines and clicked on "Check Flight Status", just to be presented with this information:

Still, it's hard to beat just typing in the airline and flight number into Google!

In any case, gotta go, hope this is helpful!

Can I track a plane flight on the Web? :: Free Tech Support :: Ask Dave Taylor!®

Reading Levels in Google's Sidebar

Reading Levels in Google's Sidebar

Google's search options sidebar includes a feature that was only available in the advanced search page: filtering results by reading level. If you enable this feature, Google will classify search results based on the complexity of the text. You can restrict the results to "basic" pages, "intermediate" pages and "advanced" pages, which are mostly scholarly articles.
"Sometimes you may want to limit your search results to a specific reading level. For instance, a junior high school teacher looking for content for her students or a second-language learner might want web pages written at a basic reading level. A scientist searching for the latest findings from the experts may want to limit results to those at advanced reading levels," explains Google.

Related Links by Google

Reading Levels in Google's Sidebar

Google's AROUND proximity searches

http://batesinfo.com/Writing/Archive/Archive/april2011.html

I recently started playing around with one of Google's lesser-known features, the AROUND proximity operator. Google's AROUND syntax lets you specify how close you want two terms to appear in a web site. This can be particularly useful if you are looking for two topics that may often appear on the same page but not in relation to each other.

Your search choices are usually either to look for web pages that contain both words anywhere on the page or to restrict the search to pages in which the two words are adjacent. Now you can also specify that two words or phrases must be no more than, say, 5 words apart. The syntax is search-word AROUND(x) search-word, replacing "x" with the maximum number of words you want between the two search terms or phrases. (Be sure you type AROUND in all caps; otherwise, Google treats it as just another search term.)

How does this work in real life? I was recently working on a project analyzing the impact on the workplace of the arrival of digital natives (those who have grown up with digital technology). A search for "digital natives" workplace turned up useful information, but I had to wade through a fair amount of irrelevant material in which the phrase digital natives and the word workplace both appeared, but not in the appropriate context. When I changed my search to "digital natives" AROUND(6) workplace, the results were more focused on what I had in mind. The difference wasn't dramatic but the results were definitely better.

For straightforward, just-get-me-the-answer searches, the AROUND feature probably will not improve your search results noticeably. The query ipad review returns roughly the same number of useful results as the query ipad AROUND(4) review, for example. Since Google factors in the proximity of search terms in calculating the relevance of each page, most of the top results will naturally have your search terms relatively close to each other. The value of AROUND emerges when you are looking for the intersection of two concepts that do not frequently appear near each other.

Bates InfoTip Newsletter