Seeking more traffic, Google widens format

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. -- Google Inc., the world's most popular Internet search engine, introduced a "universal search" application yesterday that blends video, images, news, books, maps, and local search results -- all on one page.

The company's search pages appear the same. But people searching for basketball legend Larry Bird, for example, will not only be able to get text information about the former Boston Celtics forward but also view images and user-generated YouTube clips of Bird's highlights on the court.

Search results for "I Have a Dream" similarly will offer a video of the Rev. Martin Luther King's famous civil rights speech on the first page, while results for "how to cut a pineapple" will include a how-to video. Queries for Mexican poetry will bring up an anthology compiled by Octavio Paz, as well as information on the genre.

The revamped search format was launched yesterday. It represents the most far-reaching change to the company's search results since Google began as a Stanford University research project in the mid-1990s.

"Let's face it," said Marissa Mayer, Google's vice president for search results and user experience, "when people type 'big wheels races' into Google, they want to see some action. . . . They want so see some crashes."

The new universal search application, meant to drive more traffic to Google products -- such as video clips from YouTube, which it purchased in November for $1.65 billion -- was rolled out at a press briefing at the company's headquarters.

Google also introduced other innovations, including contextual navigation links on the top of search results pages that let users filter results into news, weblogs, images, or other categories of information most relevant to their queries; a navigation bar on the top of Google's home page that takes people to Google's e-mail program, called Gmail; and a site where people can view the company's latest experiments, such as time lines or map views, and incorporate them into personalized search engines.

The moves mark an acceleration of the company's efforts to draw more computer users into Google for longer periods of time, just as rivals Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp. are stepping up their own efforts to challenge Google in the search market through improved search technology and a more aggressive push to host advertising.

"If it can use these kinds of things to increase its relevance, Google can increase its market share," said search engine consultant Eric Enge, president of Stone Engine Consulting in Southborough, Mass. "Certainly it's going to drive a lot of traffic into Google's video products and its map products."

Shares of Google jumped $14.61, or 3.19 percent, yesterday to $472.61 on the Nasdaq exchange.

Google accounted for 65 percent of all US searches in April, up 11 percent from the previous year, according to Hitwise, which tracks search engines. Yahoo accounted for about 21 percent while Microsoft's MSN service registered 8 percent.

As part of its move to universal search, Google has reengineered its search code to incorporate features such as video, images, news, maps, and even music.

Google has also been increasing its software offerings for consumers and businesses, and the new navigation bar will make it easier for users to toggle between search and other applications, including calendar and e-mail, in one or two clicks.

The company has been working to enhance its search results "on a keyword-by-keyword basis" but now will do it in a more concerted way, said Charlene Li, online media analyst at Forrester Research in Foster City, Calif. Google isn't the only search engine providing video links, Li said. Ask.com and others have already integrated video into their results.

"It makes search easier," Li said. "It gives people shortcuts. What Google is doing is trying to bring the right answer into their search results."

Google engineers and executives yesterday described the moves as part of an ongoing effort, much of it behind the scenes, to improve the comprehensiveness, relevance, speed, and user experience of its search technology.

Toward that end, in a product that has yet to be released, Google engineers are developing software that will "break the language barrier" by automatically translating queries into other languages, scan Web pages in those languages, and translate the results back into the language of the person making the query.

"That by itself opens the Web universally to the whole world," said Udi Manber, vice president of engineering .

Other new Google programs will seek to divine what people mean and convert their queries into something that will yield better results, changing "overhead view of bellagio pool" to "bellagio pool pictures" for example.

Up to a quarter of the search queries Google sees on any day it has never seen before, Manber said .

Robert Weisman can be reached at weisman@globe.com.