Google Squared makes huge strides on its one year anniversary

After being launched in May 2009, Google Squared, still currently in beta, has had many of its features injected into the primary Google search engine but at the same time it has also received a few additions of its own.

Google Squared was originally launched as an advanced fact finding arm to compliment the original Google search, Squared not brings up such simple facts as birthdates of important people and significant dates in history.

“Three months ago we began using Squared technology to highlight answers for these types of searches in snippets,” wrote technical lead John Provine in an official Google blog posting. “Today we’re expanding that effort so that when you’re looking for this kind of simple fact in search, we give you more accurate answers right at the top of your results, sourced from across the web.”

This would mean, then, that users searching for simpler queries would more then likely be satisfied with first page results, thus doing away with the necessity to click through to further web pages.

Whilst the service is not fully functional on its Google.co.uk portal, the Google blog stated that a sources list would be available, where users could also verify the validity of any facts found in the search across a number of channels.

A second new feature added to the main Google search is a new option known as “Something Different”, where a search can be opened up to include things similar to that previously searched.

As an example, Provine said a particular user might be looking for Zebras and “just as Google Squared can put together a table of zoo animals, with ‘Something different’ we automatically find other entities in the same category, such as gazelles and rhinos.

“This helps for times when you want to browse a broad topic using Google, rather than dig for a specific bit of information.”

The Google Squared Labs version also gained a few new features for its anniversary, where it is now able to sort data and search results can now be exported to a specific file.

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