Search is taking quite a spin around with real-time search results, various experiments with navigation through search results, the type of results like maps, relevant videos and local results are playing a key role. Google experiments with its navigation through search results to provide the best user experience and faster load time. You might be aware of the fact that Google has recently redesigned their search results navigation options, giving it a much simpler and elegant look and feel.
In this article, I would like to briefly cover some of the intriguing search experiments featured on Google labs.
Gesture Search enables you to search your Android-powered device by drawing alphabet gestures on the touch screen. This feature allows users to find an application, contact, bookmark or a song with ease- all at one place.
This is a faster and fun way of using search to quickly navigate through your phone and browse through hundreds of items. Gesture search currently recognizes the English alphabet and requires Android 1.6 or above.
Aardvark
Aardvark is an easy to use service to find answers to your questions. You can send Aardvark a question in plain English, like you do when talking to a friend and it figures out who might be able to answer, and asks on your behalf.
To try out getting free answers to your questions, you first need to register at vark.com, then send a question via Twitter to @vark.
Image Swirl
Google Image Swirl organizes image search results based on their visual and semantic similarity and presents them in an intuitive exploratory interface.
Related Links
Given a page on your website, Related Links can choose the most related pages from your site and show them in a gadget. Related Links helps webmasters to increase page views on their websites.
You can embed this gadget in your page to help your users reach other pages easily.
Related Links also suggests searches that users can run within your site to find even more related pages.
You might also want to check out Google Social Search.