Google have recently added a collection of tools that help you to filter through the SERPs that they present when you perform a search.
We’d noticed a slight change in the page layout for the Google page a few weeks ago and it seems likely that it was in preparation for adding these filters.
Now, when you search, below the search bar at the top of the screen, and in line with the number of results for that phrase, but aligned to the left, you have an option to "Show Options" that allow you to filter your search results:
Once you have opened up these options, you are presented with a number of filters that help you to refine your search from within the results of the phrase that you have already searched for:
This allows you to filter "all results" to only see "Videos", "Forums" and "Reviews". You can also refine your basic search by time, to see images from the pages in the results, or to see an increase in the amount of text from the pages that are listed in the results.
You also have options to change the view, which allows you to see "related searches to the term that you originally looked for, which will be useful for SEO, as it allows you to identify some related searches that you could potentially look to target:
You also get to see the "Wonder Wheel", which Matt blogged about a couple of months ago.
You can also see a "Timeline". I assume this allows you to see some of the history of the use of this phrase on the web, although this is not entirely clear:
When you filter these results to see "Video", you are presented with further options to refine your search, either by the duration of the video, or by the time that these videos were posted/added to the index.
When searching for "Forums", you can sort by time, relevance or dates posted, and have similar options for getting "normal" results, images from the page or additional text.
Finally there is the option to filter "reviews", with similar options to refine the search as "Forums". This allows you to find sites that are either looking for or providing reviews – which should be useful when searching for products and services.
Google is continually striving to improve its results, and adding these filters is likely to help people more easily find what they are searching for.
If only Google could purge the foreign English language results that have been littering their UK search results for the last 6 weeks or so, then this could serve to really help improve Google to serve really good search results to its users.
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