Google Squared Gets Some Much Needed Improvements
Google Squared launched to a lot of hype earlier this year, but the initial reaction from most pundits was rather negative. Squared, which gathers and displays structured data, often returned rather nonsensical results, and we would venture to guess that only a few people are actually using it now. Today, Google announced some updates to Squared that should make it more useful. Now, if you do a search on Squared, for example, the results will contain up to 120 facts - up from 30 in the initial release.
As Google points out, a search for US presidents, for example, initially returned a table with only five presidents and three categories. Now, however, this table includes data on 20 presidents and lists up to six attributes. Squared also now gives users the option to sort columns - a feature that was sorely lacking in the first iteration of this product.
Squared is now more selective about the data it includes. And it also learns from edits and corrections that users make.
New: Export Data to Google Spreadsheets and CSV Files
In addition, Google gives users the option to export data to a Google Spreadsheet or a CSV file. This should make it a lot easier to actually do something interesting with this data. As an example, Google explains how to build a list of African countries and then create a scatter plot that examines the relationship between GDP and literacy rate in these countries.
Will You Give it a Second Try?
Overall, the data that Google Squared now returns does indeed look more accurate than in earlier versions, though some results are still rather strange (to be fair, this is still a Google Labs product). We do wonder how useful a service like this really is. Are you likely to head over to Google Squared for research? Would you trust its results?
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Definitely not. For example, if you search for "German Chancelor" it (a) returns "did you mean 'German Chancellor' which returns zero results, (b) returns Martin Luther as a German Chancelor and (c) isn't able to connect the data over terms.
That's sooo alpha.
wow. somethin' funky's going on with your CSS?
try this.. look at the US presidents spreadsheet.. add a column for awards and look what they have for barack obama!
Stefan,
It doesn't return Martin Luther, it returns Hans Luther who was... Chancellor of Germany from 1925 to 1926. That's actually pretty impressive.
John