When the new design was announced at the beginning of December, it was, reportedly, supposed to roll out to all users within a week. Nearly two weeks later most users are still not seeing it. We were able to get access to the new design. Here's a preview...and some of it's not pretty.

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The Advanced Search Is Hidden Again

The June 2011 moved the link to Google's Advanced Search page off of the homepage and hid it behind the gear icon in the upper right-hand corner. Now it's gone from there too. Now, access the Advanced Search page isn't offered until AFTER you've run a search. (Click the gear icon and then Advanced Search from the drop-down menu or the Advanced Search link at the bottom of the search results list.)

You can still access the Web Search's Advanced Search page directly at https://www.google.com/advanced_search. One of the useful filters that disappeared in the June 2011 redesign of the Web Search Advanced Search page, like the Page-specific tools: Find pages that link to the page: have returned (as have the three OR Boolean connector search boxes).

What's on the Drop-Down Menu...and What's Not

The only "general" background or investigative-search-related search options on the first screen of the drop-down menu are Search, Images, and News. Other options are Maps, You Tube, Gmail, and Documents. 

Clicking on the More link at the bottom of the list open a fly-out list that includes Books and Finance, in addition to services like Blogger, Calendar, Translate, and Music.

Of course there's an Even more link at the bottom of this fly-out list. Clicking it displays an Everything Google page that includes the What do You Love Google search box, as well as links to (presumably) Everything Google.

This drop-down menu is available by clicking the Google logo on the homepage of any of the Google services that have been redesigned (currently this includes just about all of the services with the exception of Groups), as well as the Google bar.

Changes to the Search Filters

Ever since Google first introduced the three column layout they've been adding and deleting filters from the left-hand side bar that's displayed after you run a search. For example, they have recently added Flights, Patents, and Recipes to the list; renamed Groups to Discussions; and deleted the Timeline display mode. (Note that Groups still retains its old name on the Everything Google page discussed above.)

Portions of this post adapted from:

"Google For Lawyers: Essential Search Tips and Productivity Tools" is a hands-on guide to the Google tools, tips, and tricks that can help you work smarter...not harder.

The post Google Redesigns Home Page Again, Hides Advanced Search Page Further appeared first on Continuing Legal Education (MCLE) in California, MCLE Los Angeles, CLE Orange County, Irvine & San Francisco.

Google has launched a new search aggregator service. The What Do You Love About Google site (http://www.wdyl.com) displays results from multiple Google specialized databases and services all on one page. Like most Google services, the WDYL homepage carries a single box and a search button. Keeping with the "love" theme, the search button contains a heart. 

The order of the databases or services in the results list varies from search to search. Results include Google Maps, Picasa, YouTube, Google Translate, Googel Maps, Google Patents Search, Google BlogSearch, and others. Results from each database or service are displayed in their own individual widget. A button at the bottom of each widget links directly to that database or service.

The blue box on the left-hand side of the results can be used to scroll down the page. The grey squares inside the blue box indicate your position on the page of results.

While the homepage caries the requisite Googel copyright notice, WDYL seems more like a "20% percent project" than an "official" Google service - for a number of reasons. (Google employeees are encouraged to devote 20% of their work hours to an independent project that interests them.)

A look at the domain registration record for WDYL.com indicates that the site has been registered since 2005. Looking at old versions of the page using Archive.org's WayBack Machine shows that in the past the site sold...well it's not clear what the site sold, but it is clear that it was not a Google-affiliated site. 

Digging deeper into the domain registration shows that the site is registered to an individual with a corporate/employee e-mail address at (one of) Google's offices in New York (it's the Chelsea office). Domains for official Google services like Picasa, YouTube, and Orkut are registered to Google's corporate headquarters in Mountain View, CA (or to brand protection/domain management service MarkMonitor on Google's behalf.) Official Google services are also hosted on Google's own nameservers (e.g., ns1.google.com). WDYL.com is hosted on a nameserver controlled by a retail domain registrar/hosting company.

Regardless of whether WDYL.com is an official Google service or not it is an interesting presentation of search results from multiple Google services. Some way to access Advanced Search features would be nice, but feeding advanced searches to the multiple services and databases would, no doubt, be a difficult task.

The post Google Launches ‘What Do you Love’ Aggregator | Or Does It? appeared first on Continuing Legal Education (MCLE) in California, MCLE Los Angeles, CLE Orange County, Irvine & San Francisco.