[evilfantasy]

-Original story at Mashable-

Google has a giant target on its back. Microsoft has been on a spending and deal-making spree to grow Bing, recently signing a huge search deal with Yahoo. And with Bing starting to steal some market share from Google, it’s proving to be a formidable opponent.

Google’s not taking any of this lying down. Secretly, they’ve been working on a new project: the next generation of Google Search. This isn’t just some minor upgrade, but an entire new infrastructure for the world’s largest search engine. In other words: it’s a new version of Google.

The project’s still under construction, but Google’s now confident enough in the new version of its search engine that it has released the development version for public consumption. While you won’t see too many differences immediately, let us assure you: it’s a completely upgraded Google search.
Google specifically states that its goal for the new version of Google Search is to improve its indexing speed, accuracy, size, and comprehensiveness. Here’s what they wrote:

“For the last several months, a large team of Googlers has been working on a secret project: a next-generation architecture for Google’s web search. It’s the first step in a process that will let us push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions. The new infrastructure sits “under the hood” of Google’s search engine, which means that most users won’t notice a difference in search results. But web developers and power searchers might notice a few differences, so we’re opening up a web developer preview to collect feedback.”

Try out the new Google search by visiting here. http://www2.sandbox.google.com/ and see the full article with screenshots (look under ‘Trying Out the New Search’).

[Hybr!d]

Not sure is this is a mashable publicity stunt/link bait where they just happened to stumble across some google test subdomain. Not heard anything myself and in the past google keeps it's cards close to it's chest, no press release from them? They also run 100's of data centers for the main algorithm/search so really have no need to make a separate search. They need to track user data, click-thrus etc. so creating a separate url for a separate search will get little use from the non-webmaster public and thus no real track-able user data. With their current setup they can run a new algorithm on say just a small amount of US searchers using google.com and monitor results and no one would even know, which they do already.

[evilfantasy]

I agree Dave. I think once it goes final they will just move it over to the regular google.com link.

I did some digging before hand as I was skeptical as well. I believe the code name for it is 'Google Caffeine'.

More links from a Google News Search:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technolog...ch-engine.html

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/...5WOBAD9A0O3H83

http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/news...-results.phtml

http://googlewatch.eweek.com/content...g_results.html

[4D(Fordy(Ford) Ollie]

Just did a test search witht his to assure myself they actually had changed something significantly to make it worthwhile.

Open both of them in 2 separate tabs and search for 'test search' in each, see for yourself, the results are fairly remarkable in their difference.

[Hybr!d]

Yeah, it's real, it a new way of doing things for google. Traditionally they are very closed off about new developments to their organic search. A good find mate.

Official info here > http://googlewebmastercentral.blogsp...eneration.html