SearchMash: Google`s New Experimental Playground - SearchMash Features
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Given SearchMash's position as an experimental playground, you can expect its feature set to change; the ones I discuss in this article are the ones that were available for me to try out at the time of this writing. Oh, and that's another point; Google said of SearchMash that "This site is only a test and has traffic limitations so may be unavailable at times."
Click on the Features link, and you get a list of current features that explain them in both words and screen shots. Next to each feature is the question "Is this useful?" and you can click on "yes" or "no." The ability to vote makes a lot of sense. Google specifically said that "There is no guarantee that the features tested on SearchMash will be seen on Google Search. As with all of our experiments, one of the main factors we will consider is user response to the feature and how well it addresses their needs."
The "start typing" feature was nothing special. It automatically lets you start typing in the search box without your cursor needing to be there. It's not actually limiting where your cursor can go; if you click somewhere else on the page, then start typing, what you type doesn't show up in the search box. It might save a little time by letting you type your queries as soon as you arrive on the page.
The URL menu, on the other hand, is kind of nifty.
By clicking on the green URL that appears below each result, you can choose a number of options pertaining to that result. You can display it in the same window, a different window (handy if you like to refer back to your search results), or open a cached copy (which brings up a Google-branded cached copy of the page). "More from this site" turns up a search result listing more pages from the same site (nearly 3,000 pages in the case of SEO Chat), while "More similar pages" turns up similar pages regardless of web site.
That last feature needs work. The top result was highly relevant for the search I performed, but others seemed to be all over the place. A number of search engines turned up, which made sense if you thought in terms of "related" rather than "similar" (indeed, clicking on the link for "More similar pages" changed the search in the search box to "related:www.seochat.com/"). There's a difference in the shades of meaning between "related" and "similar" that I guess is tricky to duplicate in an algorithm.
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