With Google Squared you can search Google and have the results presented in a highly structured way. This experimental search tool is especially useful when the information you need requires complex, time consuming searches.

How it works

I have a fascination with skyscrapers and I would like to collect a list of buildings that have at one point been the world’s tallest. Instead of visiting site after site, collecting my list in a document, I can use Google Squared and search for world’s tallest building.

I am presented with a list of buildings and structured information about each in these categories: Item name, image, description, year, status, architect. The categories will vary from search to search and it is easy to add extra categories. I also want to know the height of the buildings, so I enter height in the Add columns box and height is added to each building. I go on to add columns for stories and cost as well.

My list includes Shanghai World Financial Center, Burj Dubai and Chongqing World Trade Center. It also has a listing for Moscow. This is obviously a mistake (remember, this is an experimental tool). No problem, though. I simply click the x at the left side of the Moscow row and it is gone.

Some buildings are obviously missing too. After removing Moscow and a couple of the strays in my list, I type Petronas Towers into the Add items box below the column of items. A row appears with appropriate information: image, year, architect, height etc.

Still some quirks

Google offers to suggest items for my list. On some searches this works like a charm, on others it doesn’t. There are other problems as well. The blogosphere has reported that both Russian president Medvedev and Clint Eastwood are listed as dead by Google Squared.

Still: What Google attempts here is extremely complex and the result is quite impressive even though it isn’t perfect. Google Squared is still a Google Labs product, which means it has some way to go before it is ready for prime time.

So why launch it now? Obviously to compete with Wolfram Alpha, which specializes in structured data search. And every time someone adjusts the data spread in a Google Squared search, Google gets useful data they can use to improve search results.

Finally, we demand an export function that lets us save search results in CSV format that can be imported into spread sheets and databases.

Here’s a short intro video from Google: