Google's Test Search Engine

Bengt noted Google's SearchMash which is a testbed search engine. Google spokesbot says: "The goal of Searchmash is to test innovative user interfaces in order to continually improve the overall search experience for our users. The experimental search engine looks very different from Google's Web sites and lacks Google branding. In this way, Google believes the site will yield more objective feedback from users."

Comments

Still no "non-commercial" bit

[Denial93]

Including Wikipedia makes sense. I now rely on Wikipedia way more than I rely on Google for my informational needs, because it isn't cluttered with pseudo-information that has no other purpose other than sell me something. To me, although perhaps not to Google, this is spam and it makes me not want to use Google. Of couse I can exclude pages involving "buy" or "customer service" from my results, but this is an inconvenience and I rarely bother to do so if (more often than not) I can find what I need on the wiki.

And when I want to use Wikipedia, I do not need to go via Google. Google would make themselves useful in a more unique way if they offered optional filtering of sales sites. Let me see pages on Catholic Saints that don't involve "special price" candles with pictures of them, give me information on my car without hundreds of businesses offering to replace it. And when I do want to spend money on the web (which is way less often than the times I look for information), I'll tell you Google, thank you very much.

Re:feedback on the feedback

[Boiling_point_]

How can I tell them that the images would be really good if they were somewhere else on the screen?

It's very likely that, in addition to a public beta, Google is doing some live user testing on the interface, where stuff like that would be picked up. It's pretty easy to tell if your screen layout is wrong when you watch a few people try to accomplish tasks with it. Learning whether or not people's actual search problems are solved, however, requires huge numbers of test subjects in real world situations like this!