Did Searchology 2009 Hint at Google I/O 2024? Revisiting “Search Options” 15 Years Later (A Hamsterdam History Lesson) – *Updated

By Ethan Lazuk

Welcome to another week of Hamsterdam History, where we look at SEO’s past to learn from it and see what’s changed since.

This week, we’re looking at Google’s “Search Options” unveiled in 2009 at Searchology.

This comes from a blog post (with a video) posted on The Google Blog on May 12th, 2009, called “More Search Options and other updates from our Searchology event.”

The link to the original post gave me a 404 on WayBack Machine, but we can view the full text in the main Google Blog feed at blogspot.com (the precursor of The Keyword):

We’ll start with the video from the article in the next section, then at the end, we’ll compare our predictions to what actually came out at Google I/O 2024.

Speaking of videos, if you’re a visual learner, I added a summary of this article here as well (before the update):

Google Search Options video (2009)

The original Adobe Flash Player video embedded in the blog post no longer works.

Fortunately, a YouTube version is still available. Feel free to watch it. (It’s under 3 minutes.) But I’ll go over pretty much everything it contains below.

Looking at screen captures from that YouTube video helps us transport back 15 years in time to 2009. While comparing them to today helps us see what’s changed, or hasn’t.

This is how a 2009 SERP appeared for “digital photography”:

Here’s how it looks today on desktop:

But the big features in the video were “Search Options.”

One of them was a “Forums” filter:

Maybe that sounds familiar, considering how Google recently replaced its Perspectives filter with a Forums filter:

Note how the query in that image above is also the same as what we searched for. That’ll be an interesting side learning in a moment.

Another of the (then in 2009) new additions to Google Search was a “Reviews” filter:

We have similar functionality today as well:

Not to mention all of the other Google Shopping features where reviews can appear, such as in the product knowledge panel in that SERP above.

Side note time:

Also note how in the above image Google has changed the query from “powershot sd 750” to “Canon PowerShot SD750” and added “review.”

That’s not how it behaved for the Forums filter.

I don’t think I’ve ever noticed that a query can change for some of these filters but not others.

It also appears like Google only loaded the “Shopping,” “Images,” “Videos,” and “Forums” filters at first. Then the rest of the filters appeared milliseconds later.

It happened too fast for me to grab a screenshot, but we can see in the screenshots below how the query for an initially loaded filter (“Images”) is different from a later loaded filter (“Memory card”).

An initial filter:

A filter that loaded later:

That’s also the same search journey, by the way. The orange happened while I was filtering.

I also recorded a video of this behavior that you can watch on X.

Now, back to the Reviews tab in 2009 …

Google’s YouTube video also calls out a text snippet pulled from a review and shown in the SERP:

Snippets weren’t anything new at that time, as far as I know, but as we’ll learn later, “rich snippets” were a new thing in 2009, as we’ll see in the article below.

The side options Google rolled out in 2009 were formally called the “search options panel.”

Today, we’d largely see these filters and settings on top of a SERP (like shown earlier).

But we do have product filters that show on the side for desktop:

Note how Discussions and forums is the first organic result in that SERP, as well. It’s 15 years later, but forums still matter, maybe more than ever.

The YouTube video also shows a “Videos” tab in 2009, which heavily featured YouTube:

That’s similar to today’s Videos tab:

However, if we add “shop” to the query, we see more TikTok content:

I’m a believer that social media content is often also SEO content these days, and that’s a good example of why.

As another side note, I used the same misspelled query as in the video throughout this exercise.

However, if we remove the space between “sd” and “750,” it changes the results slightly:

That’d be an interesting experiment.

Given how we saw the query change for the filters and also here, I wonder if having that space — “sd 750” vs. “sd750” — created a lexical vs. semantic search dynamic.

Topic exploration

Paying attention to the vocabulary in the video is also enlightening.

For those product-driven searches we’ve just reviewed, Google explained its new search options helped us “slice and dice” the search results.

But now we’ll learn about ways to help us “explore” a “search topic.”

Google next shows us a SERP for “green energy”:

Here’s how it looks today:

Although, I should probably be doing these searches on mobile, where we see the Discover follow topic option and the knowledge panel more prominently:

It’s also interesting how the knowledge panel is for “Renewable energy” instead of “green energy,” a real testament to it being a “topic” semantically.

As for the next feature Google showed in 2009, it was a “Timeline” option to “look at how the topic has evolved over time”:

That’s a bit cooler than what we have today for time filters under Tools:

But then the historical hits keep on coming, because Google next shows us “Wonder wheel,” a graphical representation of related search terms:

Google needs to bring back this feature because it’s damn cool, like how a user could click on a “node” to get related topics:

Keep in mind with that “node” reference, the knowledge graph wasn’t a (public) thing until 2012, three years later.

But functionally, the “Wonder wheel” gives me “Explore” vibes, like we have today on mobile (and appear to be expanding):

Didn’t Google’s video presenter in 2009 say we’d “explore” this search topic?

That’s all that’s shown in the video, but the ending sentiment is that Google wants to make it “easier and faster to find exactly what you’re looking for.”

That definitely has an SGE vibe to it, as well as featured snippets, knowledge panels, and so much else.

Now let’s turn to the article itself: Searchology event updates (2009)

The blog post was posted by Marissa Mayer (Vice President of Search Products and User Experience) and Jack Menzel (Group Product Manager).

It’s about the second Searchology event, where Google updated “users, partners, and customers on the progress we have made in search and tell them about new features.”

This Searchology took place on May 12th, 2009, similar to how the next Google I/O will take place on May 14th, 2024.

The first Searchology was two years prior (2007), when Google launched Universal Search, “a feature that blended results of different types (web pages, images, videos, books, etc.) on the results page” and was now “triggering on ten times as many queries” as when it launched.

Something we hear a lot about with SGE today is “new types of searches” (my paraphrasing).

This snippet from Google’s 2009 blog post announcing these features gives me those vibes:

“But as people get more sophisticated at search they are coming to us to solve more complex problems. To stay on top of this, we have spent a lot of time looking at how we can better understand the wide range of information that’s on the web and quickly connect people to just the nuggets they need at that moment. We want to help our users find more useful information, and do more useful things with it.” [Highlights added.]

– Google Blog (2009)

It then goes into the first announcement of “Search Options,” which we just reviewed from the video.

“Search Options helps solve a problem that can be vexing: what query should I ask? … The Search Options panel also gives you the ability to view your results in new ways. One view gives you more information about each result, including images as well as text, while others let you explore and iterate your search in different ways.” [Highlights added.]

– Google Blog (2009)

In the video, we saw an example of a review snippet.

Well, apparently that was part of a larger rollout of rich snippets globally:

“We call the set of information we return with each result a ‘snippet,’ and today we are announcing that some of our snippets are going to get richer. These ‘rich snippets’ extract and show more useful information from web pages than the preview text that you are used to seeing.”

– Google Blog (2009)

The blog also includes an example of a local business rich result with review and pricing markup, using a Yelp example:

Star ratings for businesses aren’t directly available, but Yelp can still show them as a third party:

Also, can you believe Google used a real business for that example? Crazy. Unfortunately, it’s closed.

Something else that’s changed is Google’s 2009 recommendation to adopt “microformats or RDFa standards to mark up their HTML and bring this structured data to the surface.”

While those formats are still supported, Google now recommends JSON-LD “as it’s the easiest solution for website owners to implement and maintain at scale (in other words, less prone to user errors).”

Here’s something I learned. Google Search Labs existed back in 2009.

This is currently where SGE lives today, as well as my favorite, SGE while browsing:

Back in 2009, the latest Labs feature was “Google Squared.”

“Unlike a normal search engine, Google Squared doesn’t find webpages about your topic — instead, it automatically fetches and organizes facts from across the Internet. We’ll be opening it up to users later this month on Google Labs.”

– Google Blog (2009)

According to Search Engine Land, Google Squared was shut down on September 5th, 2011.

Here’s how it looked:

Kind of reminds me of a forum result today. How about you?

Recapping the parallels

In the original version of this post, we looked at Google I/O 2023.

The big theme of Google I/0 2023 was generative AI, and specifically the introduction of AI-powered summaries in Search Generative Experience (SGE).

These overviews arguably allow users to quickly connect with “nuggets” of information as well as “slice and dice” the search results, seeing different angles or topics, sources, and types of information.

Of course, SGE also has follow-up questions within the search interface, which allow users to “explore” a topic in depth.

In that sense, SGE was kind of a natural evolution of the themes we saw Google promote 15 years ago at Searchology 2009 all packaged into one feature.

Then at Google I/O 2024, Google turned SGE into AI Overviews, and formally rolled it out to all U.S. users and 1 billion global users later this year.

Google also announced that a customized version of Gemini is being used within search, allowing for multi-step reasoning, planning, and modality.

Speaking of which, the other big announcement was video understanding, and being able to ask queries from videos.

Then there’s also the AI-organized results page, personalized to you for categories like dining, recipes, movies, music, books, hotels, shopping, and others.

From the past and present (2009 and 2024), we can decipher a few things of note …

Google’s big announcements come around May.

Google’s love of forums is evergreen.

Google unveils really cool features, like “wonder wheel,” that never get heard from again.

Or do they …

Google also unveils features that never get off the ground, like whatever a Lady Gaga is.

Just kidding. (Much love below.)

I mean like Google Squared.

Unless they come back in a new form?

What also seems tried and true, big picture, is Google’s desire to deliver the “perfect” click (to paraphrase Fabrice Canel, shoutout Bing).

Here’s how Google’s 2009 blog post concluded:

“These features really explore search from a broad and entirely new perspective. Because we realize that when you can’t quickly find just the exact information or content you need or want, it’s our problem, not yours. And it’s a problem with plenty of room left for innovation. Stay tuned.”

– Google Blog (2009)

That sounds a bit like the intention of AI Overviews and personalized AI-organized results pages to me …

History also tells us product reviews, videos, and forums matter, as do quick answers and perfect clicks.

In the original version of this article, I wondered if SGE is the final answer or just another step toward a better one?

It appears for now, that’s the direction Google is taking. 😉

Thanks for sticking around for this week’s Hamsterdam History!

Catch us next week. Or go back to the future below with past lessons.

Until next time, enjoy the vibes:

Thanks for reading. Happy optimizing! 🙂

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