Google Labs [1] quietly released yet another innovation last week with the announcement of Google Squared [2], which lets you see your results in a table rather than a list. This can be rather useful in theory because instead of having to undertake multiple searches to find the information you need, you can slice and dice the data in the table to get at the information you are seeking. What's more you can add or delete columns to display the information you want, but the default choices are sometimes not terribly relevant. So far at least it is very much a lab experiment.

To test the system, I entered 'content management system.' It came up with a list that includes Fatwire, Midgard, Day and OpenCMS as the initial results. (Note that when I entered the same search again, I got different companies.) You have the option of manually adding items or displaying another five items and you can delete those you don't want to narrow your list further.

The default columns are name, image and description--all of which are reasonably useful, but the other defaults are director, author and country, which for me at least, are not terribly relevant data. You can easily add and delete columns however, to find the information you want. Once you have it as you like it, you can save your table. Much like, Wolfram Alpha [3], you have to know how to enter the information you need, and you can't always get the results you might be looking for. Still, Google Squared is an experiment and Google admits that in its current form, it isn't perfect.

But the fact that Google is thinking about how to present search results in different ways is a very positive step and experiments like this should bear fruit in the future and provide new and different ways to present results depending on what you're searching for and what your needs are and that could end up being very important as search evolves in the coming years.

For more information:
- see the Google Squared announcement [4] in the Official Google Blog

Related Articles:
Microsoft readies newest consumer search product [5]
Wolfram Alpha doesn't impress [6]
Wolfram Alpha could be useful for researchers [7]
Google unveils search Wiki [8]