11 Dec 07 Google can now read graphs

Google has proved itself time and time again when it comes to delivering accurate search results. Most of the time, their accuracy is being improved by how they innovate in restructuring the web to make it easier for their crawler to understand. Often, they leverage the symbiotic nature of users of the web and the web itself.

By being the providers of valuable tools, Google can then better understand the information that relies on the standardised structure of the information using those tools.

Examples of this can be seen with Google Analytics, Sitemaps and to a somewhat lesser extent, Google Webmaster Tools. Page rank was used in a similar way to manipulate SEO methods to the advantage of Google.

Their latest innovation in this area is the Google Chart API.

This allows people to code charts with just a URL, and from the structure of that URL, Google can understand all of the data contained within it. All of a sudden, the information that once sat within the images of this blog, can now be unlocked through Google’s search engine.

So, to demonstrate, here is a quick graph of Lasoo’s first month of growth.

http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?
chs=300x200
&chd=t:0.0,12.0,72.0,72.0,100.0
&cht=lc
&chxt=x,y
&chxl=0:|03Nov|10Nov|17Nov|24Nov|1Dec|1:||Market%20Share(.25%)