Google is always testing tweaks to their search results but today I noticed a very interesting feature that I think is called Google Categories. Below is a screen grab of SERPs for “dvd players”. “motorola cell phones” also triggered these results but things like “lawn care” and “art museums” did not. It’s obviously product focused.
Notice the bold headings on categories of search results including: Comparison Shopping, Reviews, Stores, References and Others. There’s also a link to turn this feature off at the top right, “Turn OFF Categories for these results”. There are other categories including Forums, News and Manufacturers.
With each category, there is a “more” operator for specific categories including more:stores, more:product_references, more:forums, more:blogs, more:news, more:manufacturers.
While the additional categories are suggested at the bottom of the search results, they don’t necessarily work at the moment. For example, clicking on the “blogs” category for a search on “dvd players” did not return a list of search results from blogs. It would be very cool if it did though. My guess is that they’re still working out the kinks.
I tried the same query with another browser and the Categories feature did not appear. Such an implementation Google-wide would have a very big impact on how web sites can be optimized and promoted within Google.
I am not sure how new this is as I’ve not found other references to “Google categories” or “Google grouper”. If you’ve seen this or have more info, please let me know.
