Google (NSDQ: GOOG), which just last week launched a redesign of its search results page, is now introducing some changes to the content of its results too. The company says it will directly answer “millions of different fact-seeking searches” with short answers at the top of its results. Search for “Catherine Zeta-Jones date of birth,” for instance, and the date shows up at the top, along with where Google is pulling the information from. Google says the feature is based on Google Squared, the experimental search tool it rolled out a year ago that gathers facts from the around the web and presents them in an organized way.
This is very much the way search market appears to be headed. Microsoft’s Bing, for instance, has tried to differentiate itself with “instant answers,” which feature aggregated information at the top of results (Compare the results for “Cavs” in both Google and Bing, for instance). And WolframAlpha seems to be the rare search startup that is surviving — it says thriving — by providing data-driven answers to factual queries. It tells you when Zeta-Jones was born.
Not sure how will this work for not a specific answer – for example, when you search for height of a known personality, you get 3-4 different results (close to each other), how will google decide what height should be displayed on top ?
I don’t recall a follow up on the Wolfram Alpha “explosive growth” comment in the previous entry linked from this article. Did they exploded in ad revenue or socialite popularity?
This feature if not marketed right cause consumer confusion. And similar to an article written here, the answer, believe it or not is what the searcher may want to hear and not necessarily the right answer.