Google used to have a feature that allowed you to watch videos from YouTube and Google Video inside the search results. Launched in May 2007, the video plus box was a quick way to play videos without having to load the entire page of a video hosting site. For some reason, Google only limited the plus box to its own video sites (YouTube and Google Video), while showing thumbnails and metadata for other sites.


Yahoo Search added a similar feature in October for YouTube, Metacafe and Yahoo Video, but now the plus box is nowhere to be found in Google's results:


Instead of making the feature available for other video sites, Google decided to remove it altogether. Hopefully there's a better explanation than increasing the number of page views for YouTube and Google Video, as Google usually puts the user first.

If you do a search on Google Video, which now is a video search engine and returns content from YouTube and Google Video, you'll notice an option to watch each video result on the same page, in a small player. This is a good way to preview the content before watching it in full view.

If you have a slow or unreliable Internet connection, you can open more videos at the same time and pause all of them, so that you can watch the videos without interruptions.

Google tested the video PlusBox in the web results, but probably realized that it's more appropriate to use it in Google Video.

I wrote a lot about Google Plus Box, an expandable extension of the snippet that shows up for some sites in Google's search results. Most of the time, this information is retrieved from different Google services.

After introducing the Maps Plus Box and testing the Finance Plus Box, Google experiments with a Video Plus Box that shows a preview of a video inside the search results. Razvan Antonescu, who spotted this experiment, saw it only for a Google Video page, so it's likely that - at least for the moment - Google will add it only for Google Video and YouTube.


Of course, Google should continue to be objective and include it for all the online video sites, but there are some questions:

* What are the videos sites? How to detect all of them and find the embeddable code?

* Will those sites want the Plus Box? Maybe they'll say Google steals traffic from them, because they want to show ads and to have big page views.

* Who will click on the search result to see the video (and maybe some comments and context), like they used to do?

* It will be the first time when content outside of Google control will be included in the search results (for example, the thumbnails from image search results are hosted by Google). Will there be performance issues?

Google also promised to add more video sites to Google Video and to transform it into a real video search engine. They'll have to answer to the same questions for Google Video, so they should connect these two efforts to make videos more accessible.

The snippet displayed in the search results pages is important because it shows some excerpts from the web page that have your search terms and helps you decide if the result is OK for you. But Google could show you much more about a site.

Google added some time ago an expandable box (called PlusBox or ManyBox) next to search results connected to local businesses. Now they're experimenting with a Finance Plus Box, that shows financial information next to the homepage of a business listed on a stock exchange.


But this is only the beginning. Unlike OneBoxes that are query-dependent and are displayed at the top of the search results, a Plus Box is added next to a search result, regardless of the query. Plus Boxes show information from different Google services that are highly relevant to a site.

If you consider the case of a local business, it's clear that many people want the address of the business and how to get there. If you search for "oil company", it's nice to see additional information about companies, like the stock quote.

Google also experimented with a Plus Box that shows facts from a site and also a search box that lets you search inside the site.


In another experiment, Google showed related blog posts and important pages from the site:



Other Plus Boxes that should be available in the weeks to come:

* a Google Scholar Plus Box that shows information about scholar papers: the abstract, the number or quotes, the number of pages and links to Google Scholar.

* a Google Video / YouTube Plus Box that shows a small player where you can preview a video inside the search results.

This is a unique feature and Google will continue to add Plus Boxes for different kinds of sites. The universal search engine is closer.

Remember the ManyBox (or Plus Box) that shows up next to Google search results that are connected to a physical location, like a local business or an organization? "What Plus Box?", you'll ask me. Well, this one:


Google tests a new Plus Box for stock quotes. If a site is connected to a business listed on a stock exchange, you'll see a link that says: "stock quote for GOOG", for example. If you expand the box, you'll get information from Google Finance about the stock and the company.


Unlike the OneBox results that show up at the top of the search results or at the bottom of the page, Plus Boxes are connected to individual search results and give more information about the context of the site. We can expect to see more expandable boxes in the months to come.

{ Via Vygantas Lipskas. }

Google shows OneBox results at the top of the search results if there is relevant information from other sources: news, music, shopping etc. But now the famous OneBox has a new relative: ManyBox, that appears under some search results and shows structured information from that pages.

I reported in August that Google started to recognize addresses from web pages and included a link to Google Maps under those search results.


In this case, this search result for "Très Jolie" is the homepage of a business, so the address is relevant. By default, the map is not visible.

Google might use ManyBoxes to showcase some parts of a web page (think about a long page that includes sections) or links that create context for a page. In this experiment, Google shows an extended snippet and a search box for each search result.

Adam Trachtenberg reports a new experiment in Google search results page. Some of the pages that contain addresses have a new option below the snippet: show the address on a map. If you click on the link, you see a small image from Google Maps and a link to the interactive map. As usually, the new feature is available only to a small number of users.

Google wants to include its specialized searches in the main search, so, for example, if you search for a restaurant, you'll easily find pages that contain the address of the restaurant.

Google Toolbar has a similar feature, that also works with Google Earth, Mapquest and Yahoo Maps.

In "The next step in search", I predict that search engines will try to "grasp the meaning of a page and of its parts, to create a semantic web algorithmically. The next step for Google is to structure unstructured information, and to turn the web into a Google Base."

{ Thank you, Ramibotros. }

Related:
New Google Local onebox
Other design experiments