by CIO Staff

SearchMash is Google Testing Ground

News
Oct 03, 20062 mins
Consumer Electronics

Those curious about what enhancements Google may implement in its search engine should check out a new site called SearchMash.

Operated by Google, SearchMash is a testing ground for user interface changes that may or may not graduate to the Google.com search engine, a company spokeswoman said via e-mail.

“The goal of SearchMash is to test innovative user interfaces in order to continually improve the overall search experience for our users,” she wrote.

The experimental search engine looks very different from Google’s websites and lacks Google branding. In this way, Google believes the site will yield more objective feedback from users, according to the spokeswoman.

SearchMash went up “recently” and can handle limited traffic, which may render it unavailable sometimes, she wrote.

Google.com’s famously minimalistic look revolutionized Web user interfaces in the late 1990s, when homepages tended toward a cluttered look. Over the years, Google has been conservative about altering its site’s design, so changes often attract wide attention.

When Google runs user interface tests on google.com, they invariably get reported about in the blogosphere along with screen shots and a heavy dose of speculation over the chances the changes have of being permanent.

-Juan Carlos Perez, IDG News Service (Miami Bureau)

Related Links:

  • Google Opens New NYC Office

  • Google Buys Calif. Garage in Which It Was Born

Check out our CIO News Alerts and Tech Informer pages for more updated news coverage.