Move over Google, there's a new search engine in town! What's that? SearchMash is Google? Never mind then, scratch that...
It doesn't make a difference really, stop going to Google.com because that's not the place to get answers nowadays. SearchMash is, both literally and figuratively speaking, the new Google.

It's quite a challenge really: how does the Number 1 search engine on the web rewrite its search algorithm and test its effectiveness without hurting its current results and user-experience during the testing process? Sergey Brin and Larry Page seem to have figured it out: create a new search engine, and do your testing there!

SearchMash.com is the evolution of Google, [[GOOG]] and should things go right, what Google will (soon enough) become. It tests a range of new features and methods of bringing information to the users' fingertips in more ways than immediately obvious to the eyes.

SearchMash was born a couple of months ago, and at first, it was Google.com with a new face. The results were identical, and for those that thought it was a hoax or a scam, the whois results proved otherwise. Since then it has constantly changed, with features and improvements being added and dropped. There is no guarantee that what we review here will make the final product, if such a thing even exists.

Several of the new-found SearchMash qualities are reviewed here, and their impact/accuracy/perfection is analyzed in context with Google, Microsoft, and the web today.

1. Improved Algorithm
   We're geeks, this is what matters to people like us. And indeed, SearchMash does feature a new and improved search algorithm to back its results.
2. Overhauled Search Interface
   Some people don't like Google's "too-plain" look - which suits others just fine. SearchMash has a different interface and attempts to compromise between style and simplicity.
3. (Really) Related Links
   Instead of AdWords on the side, SearchMash features a series of iframes that provide added results and value to your search.
4. Conclusion
   It's new, it's cool, but is it worth changing your default search engine or even homepage over to?

Improved Search Algorithm

SearchMash may have started out as Google with a makeover, but now it's radically different on the inside. Whereas SearchMash used to have identical results as your normal old Google, the results list now varies not only in order & ranking, but even in the links available.

SearchMash doesn't use its own page index - that would be taking reinventing the wheel to a whole new level. But SearchMash does analyze the contents (and especially the relevance) of websites differently; bringing links to the first page of results that would have been missed entirely otherwise. To date, no one really knows how Google's search engine algorithm works (obviously), except that it prioritizes back-links over content most of the time.

The first glance at the SearchMash search results are much of the same. For instance, the infamous "miserable failure" search brings up the same result as Google does. But that's just the tip of the ice-berg. One of Google's shortcomings, the higher rankings of news aggregation sites, is a direct result of backlink prioritization. When sites like Slashdot and Digg link to a relatively small website, it is not uncommon for the aggregated links to rank higher on Google than the actual article itself ((This is in sharp contrast to MSN Search, which doesn't give too much priority to backlinks and is more fair to the little guys, preferring content over popularity. Who's right? Let the current standings speak for themselves.)).

In our subjective testing (seeing as there doesn't exist a truly random way to search Google and SearchMash for links to small sites that appeared on Slashdot and Digg), SearchMash seems to do better. It appears that SearchMash has either defined the list of user-submitted news aggregation sites (and the URI patterns) or (hopefully!) that it dynamically analyzes the content of such pages for excerpts from linked pages. Either way, what this means is, no more less Google bloat.

Less Google Spam. That may sound impossible, but whether its placebo or the real deal, it seems to us that SearchMash has a bit more relevant content and that much less spam listings. Especially when we tried to search for the traditionally much-spammed “media converter” topics (and its variations), we saw fewer “media-converter.myspamdomain.com” listings and more truly Google-worthy listings. Again though, it might just be placebo, but that’s our take.

Honestly though, it's too early to tell. SearchMash has only been out for 2 months or so, and until a couple of weeks ago, its results were identical with Google's. Even today, the difference isn't that dramatic. All of the above was slightly exaggerated: basically forecasting the graph. SearchMash seems to be the beginning of something new and totally overhauled as far the algorithm goes, but only time can tell whether the improved results are a) placebo b) coincidence or c) here to stay. In the end, we can only hope, and revisit this topic at a later time to find out.

Overhauled User Interface

Google's look has become synonymous with its results. Giving someone Google's results without the famous rainbow-colored logo and the plain, white background is like giving a kid brown Orange Juice. Sure, the results are the same, but psychologically, we're not as comfortable with brown orange juice ((As a matter of fact, this has been psychologically proven. Not "chocolate brown" orange juice mind you, but "mud-brown" OJ. Little kids do this for the science fair, and it has something to do with how appeal affects taste. Google it!)) It's the same with SearchMash. Until we got used to it (and had incentive to use it over Google - read the rest of the review for more on that though), SearchMash was just simply unnatural. That doesn't mean ugly; just radically and unnaturally different.

Where the majority of search engines out there are busy playing catch-up-to-Google as far as search results go; it seems that the tables are flipped when it comes to the interface. In short, for SearchMash Google has taken interface ideas from everywhere on the web but Google itself. You can't really blame them for wanting to change the Google results page though, can you?

Infinite (Page-Less) Scrolling

This was Microsoft's brainchild with the Live Search prototypes. Basically the idea is to do away with pages. On Microsoft's Live Search, the more you scroll down, the more results that appear. Just like Excel: keep hitting the down button and new rows just keep on coming! SearchMash incorporates pretty much the same idea, but with a minor difference. Instead of detecting when the browser reaches the "bottom" ((Seeing as the page is theoretically infinitely long, we are at a loss of what to call the "virtual bottom" of the HTML container)) of the browser page and then dynamically displaying more data, SearchMash provides a "more" link which adds on the next 20 results to the page.

Who’s right, what's better? It all depends. Live Search's method is certainly flashier and much more natural, but it relies on some advanced AJAX scroll-detection techniques that break in several browsers (basically anything except the latest versions of Opera, Mozilla, Internet Explorer, and Firefox). By contrast, SearchMash's method is much more robust and simple, albeit a bit less intuitive and so much less natural to use.

The Purple Effect

We’re not sure why Google picked purple as their theme of choice for SearchMash, but whether it has something to do with the “royal” connotations or something else, the effect is the same. It seems that the current design is more about concepts than aesthetic appeal, because between the squished-up logo and the pale-ish purple hues, it’s certainly far from being the color of choice for the next-gen web interface to the greatest search engine on the web.

Useful Content on the Side

Several times we’ve brought up the topic of Wikipedia in Google search results. Basically, if you search for any noun or term, Wikipedia is one of the top ten results. We suggested a link on the side to the Wikipedia page on the content and then removing it from the results, but SearchMash takes that a bit further. Again, this is something else that can be considered “borrowed ideas” from Microsoft’s own Live.com user interface, which for some time did the same.

(Really) Related Links

Everyone’s grown accustomed to (and tunes out as well) the links on the right in a typical Google search. They’re ads. Paid, useless, irrelevant, money-making links. Not any more they’re not, read on below!

• The Wikimedia Block
  SearchMash.com has a really useful block on the side that basically looks for the top search results for any given search from the .wikipedia.org domain and lists them in a box. Really useful when you’re looking for research material or general info, and it doesn’t clutter the search results either if that’s not what you’re looking for.
  
  But what if the results of a Full-Text search happened to contain the data you want? What if Wikipedia’s top listings don’t have that one sentence you were looking for? Does this involve any vows or promises on Wikimedia’s side? Where does that leave both Google’s and Wikipedia’s users at the end of the day? Are we going to have another GoogleFox browser on our hands?
  
  Many questions, no answers. At least not yet. They’re all interesting, but Wikipedia has proved time and time again its ability to adapt and live on. It looks like this could be the big break Wikipedia needs to make it to the real big leagues. Any site perpetually-listed on every Google search is bound to get exponentially more famous, really fast. Just keep an eye on Alexa!
• Inline Images
  Just like the Wikimedia block, there’s another block on the side that displays the top-listed images relevant to your search. Nothing much to see here, just a quick way to see if the top 6 images are what you’re looking for or not.
  
  Besides the nicety-factor, we don’t really see much of a point to this. Add to it the overhead of pre-loading the images and the JavaScript required to power this box, and its not really much of a feature. Unless of course, Google has other plans on what it wants search to be. In that case, 6 may be just not enough however…
• Blog and Video Search
  This makes use of Google’s latest sub-search engines, displaying the top 3 blog results and top 6 Google Video hits. Unfortunately you’re restricted to videos on Google’s own Video service provider, and not video hits in general. Thank god they didn’t restrict blog search-listings to Blogger.com only!
  
  It’s wonderful to see more focus no blogs and more of a general acceptance for this growing and very-much authentic portion of the web. It has a potential to be of very real value to search-engine users everywhere, especially if Google employs its “backrub” technique to the fullest.
  
  Videos are more of a problem. How do you index the content of videos anyway? Ignoring time and money for the time being, its rather difficult to analyze their contents when even now we don’t have a decent speech recognition engine that doesn’t require training, and no AI to classify the contents, ambient noise, image type, or relevance of any given movie. Keeping all these factors in mind, it’s going to be hard to find anything more than a “most popular movies for this keyword” sort of result, and the relevance of such a listing, and even more importantly, its location on the front-page of search results becomes more than slightly questionable.

The (Inevitable) Conclusion

SearchMash is really cool. It’s definitely something worth looking into, especially if you’re the kind of guy that needs to know everything new and exciting in technology. It contains some rather nice hints as to the future of Google and what directions search is taking, and leaves you looking forward for what’s to come. If you couldn’t figure that stuff out, here’s some hints.

Search is taking a fork in the road. It’s no longer about words, text, essays, and documents. Now “real” content like Videos and Images matter just as much. They obviously matter enough that the biggest search engines today are trying to put them in very-visible places on the front page. It’s no longer about deciding what content is most valuable, but rather about letting the user decide for him or herself. The search engines now give you what you need to make a decision, based on who you are and what you’re looking for.

Blogging. It’s definitely not just for geeks or narcissistic folks only. It’s where the real news is to be found, where valuable opinions come up, and where the real analysis and research is done now-a-days. Peer review the way we know it is dead, long live the internet the online communities. It’s nice that Google/SearchMash gets that; because not only do blogs appear in the blog-box on the side, but also in the normal search results too if they’re popular enough. It’s double the attention, because it matters. That much.

Natural Interfaces. It seems to be a big deal. Pagination just isn’t cool (but until we implement such a feature here, you’ll still have to deal with the pages ;P) and it’s a good thing corporations are taking heed. It’s not enough to bring the content to the user, you also have to make the user comfortable with the results. The Vatican has a plethora of un-indexed and undiscovered knowledge and hidden secrets in its libraries, but most people would rather the ease of a Google search over that any day.

… … …

But nothing is without complexities and issues. Notice that SearchMash doesn’t have any spam errr ads on the side. When it goes gold, you can bet they’ll be there. Will the be interspersed with the i-frames on the side? Or are they going to be (gasp!) one and the same? The dynamic content blocks are cool, but they mean extra overhead, and the presence of the much despised JavaScript bloat.

Add to the content blocks all the other AJAX on the page and you’ve got a problem. AJAX is nice, no one’s denying that, but how much is enough? Whereas Microsoft’s Live Search works without JavaScript enabled in the clients’ browsers, SearchMash doesn’t. It just dies.

Google’s taking quite a few hints from Microsoft as far as design and interface go, let’s hope they learn to make SearchMash as aesthetically pleasing because right now it’s rather scary-looking.

All in all, SearchMash is nice. If you’re not addicted to Google, you might be interested in changing your default browser. If you are, maybe that’s not such a good idea just yet. It certainly does provide plenty of food for thought, from the new directions Google might be taking with this platform to the plethora of UI changes ((This includes the amazing amount of borrowed ideas, it’s actually bugging us a bit just how many ideas Google, masters of innovation and user-happiness, are borrowing from others in the field as far as the UI goes. Is it possible that’s why SearchMash is SearchMash and not Google2.com? We don’t know…)). In short, give it a shot, it looks promising. If you don’t like it, switch back, no one’s going to fine you for it.