Google is working to bring its wide range of search tools together into a single universal search tool. Ultimately users will be able to perform a single search that culls information from all of Googleis content sources and displays the results in a single list.
Marissa Mayer, vice president of search products and user experience at Google. commented "Our focus has always been making our usersi search experience as simple and straightforward as possible. The ultimate goal of universal search is to break down the silos of information that exist on the web and provide the very best answer every time a user enters a query."
Once the transition to universal searches is complete, users will be able to search a topic and see everything that is related, and not just Web sites that include the searched term. Searching a movie character name, for example, would return Web sites that mention the character along with images of the character, information and images of the actor, news about the movie production company, and more without requiring users to perform multiple searches with different query properties.
Google also plans to offer more experimental features for users to try out at the Google Labs Web site. Potential new features available now include a timeline search that displays results in chronological order, a map search that shows displays results based on physical location, contextual navigation that offers narrowed results based on search terms, and more.
Google isnit offering an official launch date for universal searching. Instead, the company will incrementally improve universal searching by adding more features over time.