Google’s quest to organize all the world’s information has taken another step forward today with the announcement that magazines are now appearing in Google Book Search. In time, these results will also become part of regular Google searches.
“Over time, as we scan more articles, you’ll see more and more magazines appear in Google Book Search results,” says software engineer Dave Foulser. “Eventually, we’ll also begin blending magazine results into our main Google.com search results, so you may begin finding magazines you didn’t even know you were looking for. For now you can restrict your search to magazines we’ve scanned by trying an advanced search.”
So far, Google has partnered with titles like New York Magazine, Popular Mechanics, and Ebony, with plenty more sure to follow. They provide the example of a search for “hank aaron catching babe” (without the quotes) and a result from an Ebony Magazine issue from 1973.
In Google Book Search, magazine article results are tagged with the word “Magazine” within the regular results. Hopefully they will add an option to search magazines specifically.
The addition of magazines is a nice addition to Google Book search and will make a nice addition to blended results in regular Google queries in the future. It also compliments the newspaper archives offered through Google news. I wonder if magazines will be integrated there as well.
