New products focus on core business

Google has unveiled four new products in an effort to improve the accuracy of online searches.

The search firm has been concentrating on non-search products of late, such as Gmail, Google Talk and Google SketchUp.

But the company emphasised during a media and analyst event at its corporate headquarters yesterday that search is, and will remain, at the core of its business. It added that search attracts about 70 per cent of its resources.

"All these [new] products are centred around search," said Marissa Mayer, Google's vice president for search products and user experience. "Our core, and where we innovate most, is inside search."

The new Google Trends lets users search information about people's interests based on queries that have been submitted to the service in the past.

It promises to display which queries were popular on a particular date and which geographies are interested in particular subjects.

The company currently offers the Zeitgeist service, publishing information about popular searches in a particular month.

"We're giving you the keys to the Zeitgeist kingdom," said Jonathan Rosenberg, Google's senior vice president of product management.

He added that the service could be useful to marketers as they research consumer interest in their products or particular trends in certain geographies.

Google Co-op includes search results from a list of selected specialist partners that list information about specific sectors. Users have to opt in to have results from these sites included.

The search firm partners with sites including Open Table, Digg, People magazine, Wine Spectator, Gap Minder and Fandango. Partners are included free of charge.

Listing search results provided by qualifying partners will make for more accurate search, Mayer claimed.

Google Co-op also lets users label websites and create virtual communities where they share trusted websites. Healthcare providers and insurers, for instance, would be able to steer clients to authoritative online sites.

The feature resembles social book-marking services such as del.icio.us and Digg.com where users share their favourite sites, but Google said that it does not consider the Co-op as a 'social' service.

Mayer added that the company will launch vertical sites for healthcare information as well as city guides.

Search results inside such verticals will be sorted to allow for further refining. Users looking for information on malaria, for instance, will be able to filter the results based on treatments or symptoms, or find websites that cater to physicians or consumers.

Google also launched a new version of its Desktop Search application which will now support so-called widgets, or small applications that float on the desktop. Widgets were previously tied to the Google Desktop bar.

The feature now more closely mimics Yahoo's Konfabulator as well as the Dashboard technology built into Apple's OS X. Microsoft is planning to offer a similar tool in its forthcoming Windows Vista operating system.

Google plans to provide users with recommendations on potentially interesting new widgets based on their past searches and information on their computers.

A frequent traveller, for instance, will be recommended to install a flight t racking tool, while movie enthusiasts could receive recommendations for trailer notification tools.

As a fourth product launch, Google unveiled the new Google Notebook that is slated for availability next week.

The tool requires a Google account and users must download a plug-in, adding a notebook to the user's desktop.

The service will preserve information by letting users drag information from web pages to the notebook, and share that information with friends or co-workers.