As a professional SEO firm, we keep track of the latest trends search engine trends. Google recently launched a new feature in their search results page that allows users to further filter their search results.

This was an anticipated and inevitable move by Google since Twitter recently announced they will be enhancing their real-time Twitter search engine. Many in the search marketing field have crowned Twitter the king of real-time search because of it’s ability to quickly index Tweets by Twitter users, enabling Twitter’s search engine to display real-time search results of emerging news trends. Something that Google hasn’t been able to keep up with since Google’s search engine indexes all types of content (not just Twitter feeds). Google has been known to take several days or weeks to re-index websites for new content.

Google’s New Options

With Google’s new options, searchers are now given options to enhance their search results by:

• Filtering the type of results (forum, video, reviews)
• Filtering by date published
• Showing more text or more graphics
• As well as giving the user the ability to expand their search with related searches, wonder wheel or through a timeline

Google has been known to continually tinker with their search results page. Adding new features at a dizzying pace. Features such as:

• Single in-line site links
• Showing search results for correct spellings
• Suggesting related search queries
• Including blog, news & YouTube links as part of Universal Search
• And the list goes on…

Time will tell whether this latest feature will truly enhance the search experience. Or whether Google is again diluting their core strength; which is, providing relevant search results in a clean & simple format.

Today Google launched a public beta version of their new web browser dubbed Google Chrome. In true Google fashion, they announced their new product via a web cartoon…which oddly enough held my attention longer than a spec sheet would have. Why foray into the browser wars you ask? Well quite simple really, to prevent other browsers from luring market share to competitor search engines (ahem..Microsoft Live).

I’ve had the chance to test drive Chrome, and so far I’m impressed. Much like their other browser ally, Firefox; Chrome also has a tabbed interface with an unintrusive and simple, utilitarian design. I’ve yet to do a full-on test of the browser but one of the more interesting features is browsing using their Incognito feature. The new privacy feature allows you to browse anonymously leaving no footrpint on your local computer of your web browsing escapades.
Supposedly Chrome will be much more stable than previous browsers due to it’s forward thinking architecture. Kudo’s to Google on a nice low-key launch of, what looks like, will be a lucrative product for them. Can’t wait to see what else Google has up its sleeve.