Ya know it almost hurts me when I see Google come out with some new thing that just kicks tail. Don’t get me wrong I’m not anti-google, but the truth is rooting for Google is like rooting for the Patriots in the SuperBowl XLII. (Definition of Irony: I am a Patriots fans, and yes I will be rooting for them in the SuperBowl XLII). Well Google’s Experimental Labs has come out with some new Search mojo that I know you all want to get your hands on. I want to dislike it, I want to say, what a waste, this is what you’ve been doing? But I cant, it rocks. The Experimental Labs search pages offers you four new exiting searching concepts, which you can choose to “Join an Experiment” and try it out any time your logged into your Google account and you visit google.com. So I thought I’d quickly walk through the four of them and then show you how you can signup for yourself, and tell Google how great they are *sigh*.

Alternate Views
This experiment focuses on giving your your results in the context of maps, contextual info, or my absolute favorite “Timelines”. Very cool stuff… but in my opinion, the least exciting of the four.

Keywords Search
This is just awsome, and honestly should be embedded into whatever search options they go with. This pulls up a list of possible word matches and how many matches those keywords have. Absolutely Amazing.

Keyboard Shortcuts
Allow you to navigate through your results with no mouse! Excellent, Here is a quick cheat sheet of the functions. Like the Keywords, definitely a must have in any option.
Key Action
J Selects the next result.
K Selects the previous result.
O Opens the selected result.
<Enter> Opens the selected result.
/ Puts the cursor in the search box.
<Esc> Removes the cursor from the search box.

Left / Right Handed Navigation
Really these are two different options, but I think you get the idea here. The options of type and depth of content are listed on either the left / right side of the page …. I know I’m left handed, but I can’t imagine anyone not going the Left handed route…. your mouse is already overthere…it’s a no brainer.

But hey don’t take my word for it, go visit Google Experimental Labs and try’em out, then pick one and put it to a road test for a few weeks.

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