Google introduces new services weekly these days, but they have not changed the basic form of their search results in a while. Yesterday I noticed some subtle improvements in the search results. I was looking for the Caltrain schedule, and typed in caltrain for my search. This was the result:

that small Schedules & Fares link at the bottom can save you a lot of time

At the bottom of the descritpion of the result were 4 links I had never sen before on Google: Stations - Schedules & Fares - Fares & Tickets - System Map. They linked directly to the inside pages of the site, saving me time in having to go to the Caltrain homepage looking for the schedule. Does anyone know how this is done technologically?

Here is another cool improvement. I needed to know whether this coming Monday was a holiday in the UK, so I searched for uk bank holiday calendar. Here were my results:

yes, I should have included “2005″ in my search - thanks Google

After the 4 first search results there is a line, and under it the phrase in red text See results for: uk bank holiday calendar 2005. The first link under the line gives me the information I was looking for, unlike my own search results. How do you do it, Google?

A war game was held last April by Fuld & Company where student teams from MIT and Harvard impersonated the big four web properties in a “Battle for Clicks”. As the Economist reports, this is how the teams introduced themselves:

already MSN and AOL are out of the picture

Yahoo!: “We don’t have to be the best at everything; we just have to be good enough for you.”

Google:“We are the true technological innovator.”

MSN: “We are all about leveraging Windows.”

AOL: “We are fortunate just to be invited to the party.”

No points for guessing who won (Google). This neatly sums up the current situation with those companies.

Although Yahoo! came last in the war game, there are those who say that its bid to become a major content provider and an advertising giant is working. On this blog I have 10 search results for Google and Yahoo, but I am leaning on Google.

Back in March '05 I wrote an entry about the 3 most important Search Engines, Google, Yahoo and MSN. The gist of the piece was that you should not put any effort ranking in any other Search Engine - concentrate your efforts on the big 3.

This morning the New York Times had an article about the latest Search Engine market share:

Google 59.5%
Yahoo 28.5%
MSN 5.5%
Ask 3.3%

Google's dominance is getting more pronounced.

the Googleplex in Mountain View, CA