A few weeks ago, my fiancé and I decided to move the date of our wedding up from April 2010 to September 2009. I have absolutely no idea how to put a wedding together, so I’ve obviously turned to my dear old friend the Internet to find some answers… quickly.

I find myself searching for lists of this and that on a daily basis. Take for instance my bridal quest for the perfect flowers – I’d like to find a list of flower types with a photo and some additional information. Enter Google Squared!

Google Squared is a product that allows users to research information quickly and efficiently by offering a neatly packaged online spreadsheet that pulls information from multiple webpages in response to search queries. So, when I search “flowers,” I receive a comprehensive list of just about every blossom on Earth, which also includes an image, description, genus, order and kingdom. I don’t need the last three tidbits of information, but I do want to know the seasonality of the flowers as it will help me to stay within my wedding budget to use Fall flowers. So, I simply type “season” in the add columns field and can get rid of the unnecessary columns if I choose.

There are a few other flexible elements to this Google property that make it easy to use and a valuable research tool. Each field is hyperlinked back to its resource, allowing users to dive into the info a bit deeper if they choose. Users can also export the data to a spreadsheet allowing for additional filtering and sorting capabilities, as well the ability to add user research to the information.

Google also gives users the option to save Squares when signed in, which will maintain any column customization.

While the idea of structuring the overwhelmingly large amount of data on the Internet is great, the technology hasn’t yet been perfected. As you can see in the screenshots, there is missing data. I’d also like to see Google incorporate some features that are already live on Google.com, such as restaurant ratings (when I added a rating column, the sources seemed a bit random and many had no data).

You may be saying, “Hmmm, this technology sounds so familiar…” Well, you may be thinking of any number of the semantic search startups, such as WolframAlpha, which are also based on similar concepts. However, while Wolfram offers users the answers it “thinks” they may be looking for by digesting information from all over the web into its own database and then spitting it out, Google Squared allows for a conversation between the user and the technology.

This technology is by no means perfect. That’s why we designed Google Squared to be conversational, enabling you to respond to the initial result and get a better answer. If there’s another row or column you’d like to see, you can add it and Google Squared will automatically attempt to fetch and fill in the relevant facts for you. As you remove rows and columns you don’t like, Google Squared will get a fresh idea of what you’re interested in and suggest new rows and columns to add. (Official Google Blog)

Overall, this bride gives Google’s wedding research tool a B- (alright, alright… I guess you can use it for more than just floral investigation). While the product offers a very easy way to gather data from multiple web resources, it lacks some of the features and data extraction capabilities that will make it a really amazing and comprehensive way to search.

You can watch Google Product Manager Daniele give a demo here or you can check it out at www.google.com/squared.