Recently, I blogged about Google’s launch of real-time-results integration into search-engine-results pages. Last week, Google announced more search features.

The first one I’ll discuss is Universal Search Feature in Google Suggest. As you probably have noticed for awhile, when a user types in a search phrase, a pull-down menu appears with keyword phrases that Google suggests. For example, if you search for “Milwaukee weather,” the Milwaukee weather forecast, along with keyword-phrase suggestions, will appear within the pull-down menu.

Google's Universal Search Feature in Google Suggest

Other Universal Search Features that the search engine is adding to Google Suggest include movie times, a flight tracker and, of course, local businesses. In a blog post from May 2009, Google announced that it added relevant PPC ads to Google Suggest. The example it gave was for a search for “Pontiac G8 GX.”

A PPC Ad Appears Within Google Suggest

That was a great move by Google, as it gives advertisers another place for their ads to appear. Often, their ads are the only ones appearing within Google Suggest. I performed a couple searches to get a local business’ PPC ad to appear within Google Suggest (i.e. Milwaukee Chinese food), but didn’t see any. I imagine that since local business functionality is a Universal Search Feature and that PPC ads are included within Google Suggest, it will only be a matter of time before local businesses start appearing here.

The second launch that Google announced last week is the Quick Scroll extension for the Google Chrome browser. After conducting a search and clicking on a result, the browser extension will show a small black box in the lower right-hand corner of the browser (along with a couple snippets of text from the page that might be relevant to a user’s query). When the user clicks on the text snippet, Quick Scroll takes the user to that part of the page with the relevant content highlighted. This is much better than scanning the page or using Ctrl + F to find what you need.

Google Chrome’s Quick Scroll Extension

Google has announced some exciting developments recently.  I believe that launches of real-time results, Universal Search Features in Google Suggest, and the Quick Scroll extension will make search more enjoyable, easier to use and faster. From other developments that I mentioned in a prior post, it seems that Google’s current focus on speed is not only for search but the Internet as well.