

The New Google Search - brennannovak
http://www2.sandbox.google.com

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mlinsey
OK, I'll be "that guy". What exactly has changed? Perhaps I'm merely trying
the wrong types of queries or have a spotty memory or am just plain
unobservant, but I don't notice any difference. I don't doubt that Google has
minor improvements all the time and that that therefore there is, in a matter
of speaking, a "new" google search every week or so, but I'm not noticing
anything newsworthy. Is this some sort of ironic joke that I've ruined by
taking literally?

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sachinag
I see a lot more grouped results by domain and at least one very heterogeneous
result from the domain. Example:
[http://www2.sandbox.google.com/#hl=en&q=dawdle](http://www2.sandbox.google.com/#hl=en&q=dawdle)

However, this does makes it clear that Google sees <http://www.dawdle.com> and
<http://www.dawdle.com/index.php> as different pages, so apparently I have
some SEO tweaking to do. I'd encourage all startups that rely on SEO to test
their best keywords here to get a different feel for how Google "sees" your
site.

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ZachPruckowski
Second result: 209.161.37.11/dictionary/dawdle That looks like a bug to me -
it's <http://www.merriam-webster.com>, which, in addition to not being a
sketchy IP address, is also a nice brand in terms of dictionaries.

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whirlycott1
The search results load via Ajax. That's the main difference that I see. Also
notice that the URL changes when you type in your search result, but that the
query args are sitting behind a # anchor. Normally, those values don't get
sent via referrers, which would mean that you wouldn't get that information in
the referer header on the server that hosts the search result when the user
clicks it. However, in this case, Google is doing HTTP redirects in order to
send that information along. At the very least, we can see that the format for
their URLs has changed. But they may just be in a data-gathering mode right
now. If they turn off that redirect, you won't be able to deduce the search
query that the user typed in based on your webserver logs.

~~~
there
odd, the regular google.com has done this for me for quite some time. i
thought it affected everyone until now. i just loaded a different browser with
no cookies on it and it does searches the old non-ajax way. even though i'm
logged out of any google services, my long-lasting google cookie must have
this ajax option enabled on the main google.com site.

~~~
modeless
Interesting, you guys must be on one of those A/B tests that Google does
without telling anyone. I certainly don't get AJAX results in the classic or
sandbox searches.

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frosty
Its a completely new backend they are using so ordering of results is
different.

From searchengineland: "Based on the blog post, we can guess that this new
infrastructure may include ways of crawling the web more comprehensively,
determining reputation and authority (possibly beyond the link graph and
what’s typically thought of as PageRank), and returning more relevant results
more quickly, although Google’s Matt Cutts told me that the changes are
primarily in how we index.Google’s new search is only infrastructure related
and includes no UI changes."

[http://searchengineland.com/caffeine-googles-new-search-
inde...](http://searchengineland.com/caffeine-googles-new-search-index-23823)

~~~
redsymbol
> Its a completely new backend they are using so ordering of results is
> different.

Indeed. A search for "velociraptor defense" in the old version finds 72,100
results in 0.39 seconds, while the new backend yields 565,000 results in 0.30
seconds. That's nearly eight times as much practical defensive intelligence
delivered 23% more quickly!

(ok, ok... I'll shut up and stop eroding the average comment quality now.)

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sev
Sandbox version: Results 1 - 10 of about 751,000,000 for sex [definition].
(0.11 seconds)

Regular version: Results 1 - 10 of about 104,000,000 for sex [definition].
(0.13 seconds)

7 times as many results for the same exact query

edit: speed wasn't an improvement, but definitely the number of results are.

~~~
Sapient
For when 104,000,000 results just aren't enough...

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dc2k08
Why do I get the feeling someone's trying to 'emperor's new clothes' me?

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jsz0
Still no way to permanently remove a domain from searches? I have a list of
about 15 sites I absolutely never want to see in my search results. It seems
like a simple feature to have.

~~~
nostrademons
Try SearchWiki (click the X next to each result you want to kill).

Edit: okay, yeah, that won't work. The OP is looking to kill all of a domain,
and SearchWiki is only one query/result combination.

~~~
jsz0
Doesn't that just blacklist a specific result? I want to kill an entire
domain, forever.

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jrbedard
It seems like popular websites like Wikipedia and Flickr are ranked slightly
higher in the new results compared to the old. Perhaps it's a more crowd-
sourced version of pagerank that they have been training/testing. Since they
have been HTTP re-directing results for the last 5 months, they could be using
this clickflow data to adjust sites ranking according to users behavior on the
search result page itself.

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jyothi
One notable observation from morning watching top searches of a client: A lot
of websites which "were" high on SERP based on links are now gone.

This also connects well because of the recent change google announced in the
way link juice is distributed (to avoid misuse of no-follow attribute and paid
links) <http://searchenginewatch.com/3633972>

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jasonkester
Spooky.

I have sites at #3 for "Travel Blog" and #2 for "Software Consulting Services"
when you search from Google.com. Neither are on the first page in the new
version.

I know that Google mixes thing up every few months and that my results dance
around a bit. But it's a little unnerving to see something so important to so
many people's businesses change so dramatically.

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vimalg2
Did my comment get eaten , or don't I have the Karma to post? Re-post: Try
searching for any term, then click on the 'Try Google Experimental' hyperlink
at the bottom of page to see the ??Broken-rewrite-rule-related?? 404

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mingyeow
I think google is still trying to squeeze the last 0.1% of gain in terms of
web search. Future value will come in terms of social, recommendations, and
user interfaces. not squeezing that last 0.1%

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csomar
I see no real difference, I made some queries and they are (about) the same as
my default goolge.

may be if you give a difference list.

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superjared
Type in "Hacker New" and you'll note that the first result shows the site with
it's URL, not _just_ the name.

Is that it?

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I_got_fifty
The same thing happens with old google.

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brennannovak
It does seem to yield quite different results... but I can't quite notice
patterns as to why or how they are different.

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calcnerd256
Maybe it's indexing the semantic web now :P

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calcnerd256
Looks like maybe it has more realtime results? Speculation, but still.

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Tiktaalik
Searching for my first name brought up my twitter page on the first page,
where it never did before.

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dave_au
I noticed significant improvements searching for "qt" and for "boost".

