Has anyone else started seeing what looks to be faceted topical headings at the top of Google searches? This past weekend I was the groomsman at my brother’s wedding and had the unfortunate timing to catch a case of conjunctivitis in both eyes the day before the ceremony. (“Does your camera have red-eye reduction setting?” I asked the photographer. She seemed confused, so I continued: “How about pink-eye reduction?” She looked a little closer at my eyes, laughed, and said “That’s what Photoshop is for.”) Wanting to know more, I did what any self-respecting information-finder would do — I asked Google. And here’s what came up.
![[Image. Google Search Results for "Conjunctivitis"]](http://cdn.dltj.org/wp-content/uploads/2006/07/google.png)
Google Search Results for "Conjunctivitis" showing a “Refine results” heading
“Refine results”? Where did that come from?
We’re used to Google showing us refined search results for things like street addresses (giving us maps), telephone numbers (offering reverse number lookup) and certainly cross-links into Google’s Images, Froogle, and Scholar services, but this is the first time I’ve seen the main Google search index suggest a refined search back into the main Google search index.
![[Image. Google Search Results for "Conjunctivitis" refined by "Treatment"]](http://cdn.dltj.org/wp-content/uploads/2006/07/google2.png)
Google Search Results for "Conjunctivitis" refined by the “Treatment” link.
Here we see a “more:” modifier in the single search box. So where did this “Labeled” metadata coming from? Is Google running algorithms against the search index (similar to Amazon’s Statistically Improbable Phrases) to pull out this kind of faceted information?
Can anyone help sort this out?