53. A computer storage medium encoded with a computer program, the program comprising instructions that when executed by data processing apparatus cause the data processing apparatus to perform operations comprising: receiving a search query; generating first search results that identify resources that a search engine has identified as being responsive to the search query; identifying one or more search modes based on the search query, the resources, or both the search query and the resources; providing a first user interface that presents for display at least a portion of the first search results and a respective search mode selector for each of one or more of the identified one or more search modes; receiving user input selecting a first search mode by selecting one of the search mode selectors, wherein: the first search mode is associated with a first collection of records, all records in the first collection have a common attribute structure of data elements, the first search results identify resources that the search engine has identified from a corpus of resources as being responsive to the search query, and all records in the corpus do not have the common attribute structure of data elements; generating second search results that satisfy the search query and that refer to mode-specific records from the first collection of records that are associated with the first search mode, each of the one or more search modes being associated with a particular collection of records from among multiple collections of records; formatting a plurality of the second search results using a mode-specific presentation template that is associated with the first search mode to generate formatted search results; and providing a second user interface that presents for display the formatted search results.
53. A computer storage medium encoded with a computer program, the program comprising instructions that when executed by data processing apparatus cause the data processing apparatus to perform operations comprising: receiving a search query; generating first search results that identify resources that a search engine has identified as being responsive to the search query; identifying one or more search modes based on the search query, the resources, or both the search query and the resources; providing a first user interface that presents for display at least a portion of the first search results and a respective search mode selector for each of one or more of the identified one or more search modes; receiving user input selecting a first search mode by selecting one of the search mode selectors, wherein: the first search mode is associated with a first collection of records, all records in the first collection have a common attribute structure of data elements, the first search results identify resources that the search engine has identified from a corpus of resources as being responsive to the search query, and all records in the corpus do not have the common attribute structure of data elements; generating second search results that satisfy the search query and that refer to mode-specific records from the first collection of records that are associated with the first search mode, each of the one or more search modes being associated with a particular collection of records from among multiple collections of records; formatting a plurality of the second search results using a mode-specific presentation template that is associated with the first search mode to generate formatted search results; and providing a second user interface that presents for display the formatted search results. 65. The computer storage medium of claim 53 , wherein: the mode-specific presentation template specifies a mode-specific format for displaying the mode-specific records; and another of the search modes is associated with another mode-specific presentation template that specifies another different mode-specific format for displaying records.