SearchMash: Google’s Worst-Kept Secret

Google recently launched an R&D search tool called SearchMash. You can get all the details from Danny Sullivan’s SearchEngineWatch blog. I played around with it a bit over lunch today but the site went down a few moments ago; in Google’s defense, they told Danny that the site has traffic limitations and may be unavailable at times.

I find it interesting that Google is trying to keep their name off SearchMash. The official word is that “the site does not include Google branding to help us gather more objective data about user responses to new interfaces.” The existing Google search interface is so simple and clean it’s hard to think there are any elements on it that would impede their research on SearchMash. Plus, the only way people are discovering SearchMash is through blogs and other links which refer to it as a Google property, so anyone using SearchMash is coming at it with Google in mind.

I plan to stop back and try it out every so often. Who knows? You might see new features implemented there before they hit the real Google site.