Bare-Bones Results

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You wouldn’t think Google could be simplified. The home page is spare to the point of being stark, with no ads or miscellaneous graphics whatsoever. But there is room to make it simpler still, by removing the Images, Groups, Directory, and News tabs. Then strip away the links to Advanced Search, Preferences, and Language Tools. And get rid of the miscellaneous corporate links. Finally, clear out everything on the search results page except the target site links — no descriptions, ads, summaries, or anything else.

Do all that, and you’d get Google’s bare-bones search interface, at this page:

www.google.com/ie

This first destination in a mostly non-Google chapter is an official Google page. But it’s one that Google doesn’t promote, and in that sense it’s an alternative search experience.

Figure 14-1 shows what a search looks like through this interface. You don’t get much information, but you also don’t get a heavy page load. This point is important if you have your Preferences set to deliver 100 hits per results page (see Chapter 2).

Figure 14-1: A barebones search result.

Remember 

This simplified search format supports the search operators described in Chapter 2 and the specialized operators explained in other chapters. Basically, you can conduct any search on this page that you can on the regular Google home page. The phone book and dictionary work here, too.

Tip 

Run your mouse cursor over the compact results to see a snippet from each target page in a small pop-up blurb. This tip works in compact search results in other sites, too. In the “Dancing the Google Dance” section later in this chapter, I highlight a few sites that also deliver bare-bones results.

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