New Google feature: Create a search engine with schema.org types

[dsn...@ascd.org]

Google has introduced a new feature to their Custom Search product using schema.org types

http://googlecustomsearch.blogspot.com/2014/03/create-search-engine-with-schemaorg.html

Unfortunately, the use of this with LRMI is limited since the only integration is with schema.org Types, and not properties. For example, you can limit by Creative Work, or more specifically by Movie or Recipe. However, the Custom Search Refinements feature has not been updated to integrate with Schema.org, so you can not offer the user refinements specific to the type - the refinement feature is limited to tagging sites one by one within the Custom Search interface.

So even with specific Creative Work types like Movie, you can create a custom search engine just for schema.org-tagged Movies, but you can't let the searcher refine by associated type properties like Rating. With LRMI it's even more diffuse since there is not a specific Type associated with education content, only properties. But, it's a promising start, and could be a very powerful way to extend Schema.org/LRMI tagging if they allow properties to be integrated into the experience.

[Steve Midgley]

This is great thanks. Gerardo Capiel noticed awhile ago that you can include custom, non-standard schema.org-like values and CSE will operate against them. I'm not sure if that's true here, but if so, it could be worth investigating whether including some custom types that are translations from lrmi properties would make this tool work? To be clear I'm not suggesting changing the LRMI key/properties scheme - just translating some of those into types where an end user site wants to take advantage of CSE.

The other thing worth mentioning/asking is that I think CSE+schema.org only works where the schema tags describing a resource are on the same page as the resource itself. I'm not 100% sure on that either, but I believe that's a current limitation. 

Steve

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[Gerardo Capiel]

Thank you for pointing this new Schema.org support in Google Custom search.  I played with it a bit and it seems the refinements do allow filters based on attributes. 

The dialog above is confusing, because the option to give priority really work with like "search only" and selecting "search only" seems to eliminate all results.

Here is an example CSE with the refinements:

http://www.google.com/cse?cx=001043429226464649088%3As0bmhsefbzq

The refinements dialog does not seem to support using several operators at once.  I would love to be able to create a refinement that combines accessibility and LRMI properties, such as this search:

http://www.google.com/cse?cx=001043429226464649088%3As0bmhsefbzq&ie=UTF-8&q=math%20((more%3Ap%3Abook-bookformat%3Adaisy3%20OR%20more%3Ap%3Abook-accessibilityfeature)%20AND%20(more%3Ap%3Abook-educationaluse%20OR%20more%3Ap%3Abook-typicalagerange%20OR%20more%3Ap%3Abook-interactivitytype%20OR%20more%3Ap%3Abook-learningresourcetype))

Unfortunately at this point, though there is growing adoption of both LRMI and accessibility properties, Benetech's Bookshare is the only website that is publishing both Schema.org LRMI and accessibility properties.  Who's next? :-)

We should see growing usage of both sets of properties, now that the LRMI website has added the accessibility properties as "important characteristics of learning resources" included in Schema.org: http://www.lrmi.net/the-specification.

One thing I would like to see Google CSE support is the ability to apply attribute filters to subtypes, so for example the more:p:creativework-accessibilityfeature:mathml filter would include the results from the filter more:p:book-accessibilityfeature:mathml, since Schema.org/Book is a subtype of Schema.org/CreativeWork.

As a final observation, it would be interesting to revive Jim Klo's Chrome Extension that marries Google Search results with metadata and paradata that is in the Learning Registry: https://github.com/LearningRegistry/AMPS-Chrome

Gerardo

VP Engineering, Benetech

[Gerardo Capiel]

Interestingly related to my last observation, I just stumbled across this website on the Google CSE blog, which marries Google CSE with the Learning Registry:

https://kritikos.liv.ac.uk/about/