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An CEO consultant has captured video which demonstrates live Google search results as the user inputs search terms.
The video captured by Rob Ousbey and shown on his personal blog, has since been confirmed by Google as representing a test into new ways to display search results. The feature builds upon the existing Google Suggest feature where possible searches appear in the search bar.
Google spokesman Gabriel Stricker confirmed the test was genuine and told Techcrunch: “At any given time we are running between 50-200 search experiments.”
The company also points to an older blog entry which explained "we sometimes randomly select a group of people to see a possible improvement to search options."
Appaently unwilling to rest on past success, particularly in the face of renewed competition from Microsoft’s Bing search engine, Google has already tinkered with the way the search engine works and tests such as this hint at larger changes ahead.
The company recently acquired Like.com, a firm that exploits visual search technology for shopping as opposed to traditional text based approaches. It seems likely that Google will commercialise the Like.com’s image search by providing additional shopping-focused search features with the corresponding opportunities to host advertising.
Google told news agency AFP: "We’re excited about the technology they’ve built and the domain expertise they’ll bring to Google as we continue to work on building great e-commerce experiences for our users, advertisers and partners."
