Google Search Variants

I was just going through the Google labs and came across a few variants of Google’s mammoth search engine that caught the eye:-

• Site-Flavored Google Search: So maybe the name is a little long, and the product was launched about a year ago but it is something fun to play around with. What it basically does is that it goes through the content of any website that you can specify, and then creates the code for a search box that you can place on your own website. Now, the interesting part is that any searches made through this box will give results consisting of pages similar to the original page you specified. Now, although this search variant does not seem very interesting from the average person’s view, on combining this with Google’s affiliate advertising program, Adsense, the webmaster can show the visitor search results that are more relevant, more interesting for his/her audience and hence searches that can draw more revenue. However, from what I know so far, Adsense does not support this ‘flavored’ search variant, but if anybody knows, don’t hesitate to say so.
• Personalized Search: - Google Personalized search basically collects your search history by asking you to login to your Google account and claims to give accurate results by doing so. To get a Google Account, click here (if you have a Gmail account, then it acts as a Google Account as well). Well, I don’t trust it. My opinion is that it uses your search history to find out what you do on the web, and appropriately target you with their products and advertisers, but it’s only an opinion.
• Local Search: - One Google Search variant that has been catching the eye recently is local search, which is the same as the average Google search, the only difference being that your search is restricted to a particular geographical boundary. For example, if I want to search for jewelers in New York, then I would enter jewelers as the search term and New York as the location. Google would then bring up information regarding jewelers in and around NY. The problem with local search is that the content with India is very sub-standard, which renders local searches useless.
• Google Video Search: - Google Video is basically a database of downloadable videos. They mostly comprise news broadcast, interviews and other similar content. Mind you, only legal content can be posted here, and the non-legal content is filtered out quite quickly. To submit your own videos, you must register for the Google video upload program.
• Froogle: - Froogle is Google’s search engine for all products that you can buy online. The prices come up directly and quickly, and the prices are from a large number of stores, so you can get a very good deal. The only problem, once again is that it does not support the Indian online market, so we must suffer once again. But it’s still a good place to find prices of products abroad.
• Google Suggest: - This is the perfect tool for killing idle time. Suppose you’re sitting in front of your computer with the internet. Now, you can’t think of anything to do, so you start Google Suggest and type in an alphabet, and Google comes up with relevant search terms you can search for. So, not a very useful tool, but for those bored to death, well…

There are many more great implementations of Google’s search technology, all of which you can see at Google Labs, so check them out now.