New search and new graphs!

We’ve just added a couple of new features to Timetric which we think you’ll find useful. Up until now, it’s been a bit tricky to get a quick overview of the data in an area; you’ve needed to save all the series to your dashboard individually before you could plot them against each other – which meant you had to be logged in! – and, on top of that, the different sorts of search we had (by tag and by free-text) weren’t as well integrated as they could have been.

Well, we’ve changed all that.

Take employment data as an example:

Search results for "Employment" on Timetric

Two big changes here – firstly, there are sparklines, so you can get a feel for all the data in front of you immediately; secondly, you now get all the relevant tags at the top of the page on every search result, so you can immediately start filtering through the search results to find what you’re interested in. Let’s say that’s the utilities sector.

The stars on the right here, if you’re logged in, immediately save series to your dashboard; they’re gold for each series you’re already watching. But the bigger change is on the left; if you check the series you’re interested in…

Selecting series in Timetric search results

and then hit “Overlay” or “Versus”, which you’ll find at the start and end of the search results page:

you can start making plots straight from search results.

Transportation employment's much more seasonal in Alaska than in Alabama.

You can even get the embed code to put a graph into your blog straight from there:

And that gives us a chance to mention another new feature which a few of you’ve been asking for – if you hover your mouse over the points in this graph, you’ll see each measurement in the scatter plot labelled with the time it comes from.

The big changes to graphing here are actually under the covers, though: after this, we’ll be able to make some really exciting improvements in the near future.