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How to Find Visited Pages in Google Search

I'm not sure if this is a new feature, but it's pretty useful. Like most websites, Google's search engine changes the color of visited links from blue to purple. All browsers handle links this way by default, but websites can alter the colors using some CSS code.

If you're logged in using your Google Account and Web History is enabled, Google saves all the search results you visit to your Web History. When you're using a different browser or a different computer and you're logged in using the same account, Google changes the color of the visited links from blue to purple, irrespective of the browser or computer you've used to visit them. For example, I searched for [haploid] using Chrome, I clicked on one of the results, then I tried the same query in Internet Explorer and the page I've visited in Chrome already had a purple link.


Google also has a search filter that lets you restrict the results to visited pages. Just click "More search tools" in the sidebar and select "Visited pages". For pages you're visiting frequently, Google shows an annotation below the snippet: "You've visited this page X times. Last visit: ...". When you mouse over the snippet, Google suggests to +1 the link: "You've visited this page X times. +1 to recommend it on Google search!".


{ Thanks, KoalaBear. }

"Google+ Is Google Itself"

If you thought that Google+ is just a separate service you can easily ignore if you don't want to use it, you were wrong. In an interview with Steven Levy, Bradley Horowitz - Google's VP of products - says that Google+ is actually Google itself.

Until now, every single Google property acted like a separate company. Due to the way we grew, through various acquisitions and the fierce independence of each division within Google, each product sort of veered off in its own direction. That was dizzying. But Google+ is Google itself. We're extending it across all that we do — search, ads, Chrome, Android, Maps, YouTube — so that each of those services contributes to our understanding of who you are.

Redesigning all Google services to match the Google+ interface is not just about consistency, it's also a way to show that they're part of the same super-service, an encompassing layer that makes them work together.

Google+ made Android's camera app integrate with Picasa Web Albums, Google Talk integrate with YouTube and Google Docs. It's likely that Google+ will make Google services more useful by combining their strengths. That's probably the reason why you'll use Google+ even when you're not going it to Google+ and you'll end up joining Google+ even if you don't like social networks.

Google Instant Tweaks

When Google launched Instant, the main goal of this feature was to guess your query before you finish typing it and to instantly display the results. This works well if your typing a popular query, but what happens when Google can't autocomplete your query and you're a slow typist? You'll usually see the results for partial queries that include the words you haven't finished typing.

Now Google no longer includes the word you're currently typing if it's not very likely that it's a complete word. If you type [android qualcomm qua], Google will only show the results for [android qualcomm]. When your query becomes [android qualcomm quad], Google no longer ignores the third word. Here's another example:


If you actually want to find the results for a query and Google ignores the last word, you can always press Enter, click the Search button or click "Search instead for ...".

Dynamic Views, New Blogger Templates

Blogger launched in March five blog views that used cutting-edge technologies to transform a blog into a Web app. Back then, visitors had to enter a special URL like gmailblog.blogspot.com/view/sidebar or install a Chrome extension to switch to one of the new interfaces. Six months later, Blogger created two new views (classic and magazine) and added the list of dynamic views to Blogger's template editing section so that blog authors can replace their template with one of the seven views that are now available.


There are three kinds of dynamic views: photo-oriented templates (flipcard, mosaic, snapshot), text-oriented templates (classic, sidebar) and magazine-like templates (magazine, timeslide). If you don't have a photoblog, classic, sidebar and magazine are the best dynamic views for your blog. Blogger's new templates bring a lot cool features and change the way readers interact with a blog. Infinite scrolling replaces pagination, blog posts are loaded using AJAX, Blogger caches blog posts so they load faster, images are downloaded as you browse, you can use keyboard shortcuts (j/k or n/p) to go to the next or previous post just like in Google Reader. There's also instant search that shows the list of results as you type.



While dynamic views have many cool features, there are also many downsides. They're not very customizable: you can only upload a header image and customize the background colors. When you pick one of the views, all the gadgets you've added will disappear. It's also annoying that blog posts no longer open in separate pages: they open either in lightbox-like panes or in a homepage-like interface, next to other posts (here's an example). Just like the mobile template, dynamic views only work with Blogger's commenting system, so you won't be able to use Disqus. It will be interesting to see how search engines handle the new templates, considering that blog posts are loaded using JavaScript and HTML pages are almost empty.

I don't intend to switch to one of the dynamic views, but my favorite templates are sidebar and magazine. You can always bookmark these links or use Google's Chrome extension, which needs to be updated to add support for the two new dynamic views. Some Google blogs have already switched to the new templates: Blogger Buzz, Gmail Blog, Google Docs Blog and LatLong.

Google Reader, Replaced by Google Sites in the Navigation Bar

Google Reader users probably noticed that the feed reader has been replaced by Google Sites in the main navigation bar. To visit Google Reader, they need to click "More" and then click "Reader" in the list of Google services.


Unlike the last time when Reader was replaced by Google Sites, this time is not an accident. A Google employee explained that this is a permanent change.

While the link to Reader has moved, you can continue to access Google Reader under the "More" dropdown. Or, you can also set a specific bookmark to reader.google.com for one-click access. Depending your browser, try dragging http://reader.google.com right from this post onto the bookmark bar on your browser (usually below the URL bar).

Google has usually made changes in the navigation based on the popularity of the services and it's likely that Reader's popularity is declining, while Google Sites gains more users. According to Google Trends, the queries [google reader] and [google sites] have almost the same search volume in the US.


Like Picasa Web Albums, Google Reader doesn't have a new interface based on Google+. The latest features added to Google Reader were comment moderation and integration with Google Buzz, a service that will soon disappear.

{ Thanks, Cougar. }