14 DAY TRIAL // Google has debuted a new feature for its search engine that should make it a lot easier to get information on broader searches. For some searches, Google will now be displaying a "Top references" section which will show terms related, or rather, included in the general search term.
"For example, if you search for [greek philosophers], many search results mention well known philosophers like Plato or Aristotle," John Provine, Product Manager at Google, wrote.
"Typically, searches like these are the beginning of a research task, where you follow up by searching to learn more about each item in the list, in this case each philosopher," he explained.
"Starting today, for many of your list seeking searches, you’ll see a collection of the top referenced items from the topic of your search," he announced.
"If you click one of these links, the collection of links moves to the top of the results page, and results for the philosopher you clicked are shown below," he added.
This new feature is now live on the English language version of the main search engine at Google.com. It should be showing up for a number of searches and is displayed below the regular 10 search results.
It generally shows up for queries that refer to a whole category of things, be it American authors, German cars, or French cities. It also works for things like TV shows, artists and so on.
The lists displayed are not always simple text links, they can contain images if the list refers to a works by an author, the cast of a show and so on. The new feature shares some similarities with the Related Searches box, but they don't exactly overlap since they serve different type of terms.
The top references feature is based on Google Squared technology, the Labs search engine which aims to organize the information online and build complex relations between terms and concepts.