(Cross-posted on the ITA Software By Google blog)

Google aims to help people turn their intents into actions, lightning fast. For travelers, this means we’re helping to take the complexity out of planning a trip by making it fast and easy for users to find the information they need to plan their next journey. Whether you’re looking for information about flights, hotels, activities or destinations, we have tools to help you -- and they are easily accessible for people on the go. Some of our favorite new functionality is outlined below.

More information, better presentation 

This year, we’ve made some changes to the user interface of Flight Search, and added features that offer more information about amenities and fees; we did this to help users feel well-informed, and to help them quickly choose the best itinerary.

For instance, you can now quickly compare multiple destinations and multiple days simultaneously, using live prices, with our recently introduced experimental feature called Flight Explorer. Try it at www.google.com/flights/explorer.

You can also use a number of new features to tailor your flight shopping:

• More easily calculate the total cost of your trip by taking a look at the baggage fees displayed next to each flight option 
• Choose a flight offering in-air connectivity by viewing a new indicator noting flights that offer Wi-Fi 
• Consider a little more luxury in the sky by comparing the cost of flying business or first class instead of coach 
• Easily plan complex itineraries -- such as those including multiple stops, or trips that involve a flight into one city and a return trip from another -- without confusion, using our new, user-friendly interface 

Going global 

In March, we made it possible for users to find flights to more than 500 destinations outside the US. Soon after, we enabled this capability for any international destination airport, for flights originating from the US or Canada. Globetrotters can try these features at www.google.com/flights, or just type your departure city and destination in the search box.

And late this year, we rolled out localized versions of Hotel Finder in France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Switzerland, Austria, Portugal, UK and Ireland. Now, people in those areas can search for and view hotel options in their own language and currency.

Helping people make informed hotel choices 

In 2012, we made it even easier to find and book the right hotel for you using Hotel Finder. We also added more content including Zagat reviews and amenities. Hotel Finder now shows the price and availability for a choice of room types.

You can try these features, and others, at www.google.com/hotels.

Empowering road warriors, delivering better destination data 

In September, we made it easier for you to find the information needed to plan a trip, whether you’re searching via desktop, smartphone or tablet.

Soon after, updates to Google Now offered a number of ways for you to stay informed while on the go:

• Automatic flight status notifications 
• Updates on weather at your destination 
• Showcase of events happening nearby 
• Website suggestions to help you explore as you research things to do
• Electronic boarding pass cards for ease of travel

Finally, you can easily tap into the collective intelligence of the web to uncover a list of information relevant to your destination, using the Knowledge Graph carousel -- and hopefully, find inspiration.

Stay tuned for more. We think you’ll love what we have coming your way in 2013.

Posted by Jeremy Wertheimer, Vice President, Travel

As 2012 comes to a close, it's time for our 12th annual Year-End Zeitgeist—an in-depth look at the "spirit of the times" as seen through the billions of searches on Google over the past year.

On our 2012 Zeitgeist website, you can explore the most popular and hottest trending search terms from around the world. This year’s site is our most global to date, with a total of 838 lists from 55 countries. We’ve also added a number of new features, including an interactive map that shows where and when some of the hottest terms spiked around the world, and a Google Zeitgeist Android app coming out later today (with an iOS version coming soon too).

For a round-the-globe tour through 2012, take a look at our video:



So what kinds of things were top of mind this year? While there are perennial themes—“what is love?” topped the list in 10 countries—it’s the unusual and surprising that caught our attention in 2012.

Global superstar Whitney Houston topped many countries’ lists as well as three of our overall trending lists—her unexpected death surprising fans around the world. From Korea, YouTube sensation PSY’s “Gangnam Style” signature dance took the world by storm, landing him the #1 spot in many countries and making his song the second most trending query of 2012. (PSY’s video became the #1 most watched in YouTube history—stay tuned for YouTube’s Rewind for more.)


Then there was the superhuman. Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner’s epic free fall jump made him the #6 globally trending person of the year, while the 2012 Olympics and its various athletes made it into almost every country’s top trends. And NBA player Jeremy Lin also rose on the charts this year, making him the #1 trending athlete globally.

People researched a breadth of other topics, too. Web users took a serious interest in threats to the open Internet, with proposals like SOPA and ACTA both finding their way to the top of many countries’ lists. The U.S. elections brought attention to the candidates and issues, not least the presidential campaigns’ most notorious political gaffes. And while it might not be surprising to see that tragic natural disasters like Hurricane Sandy ranked highly (#3 on the global trending list), it is reassuring to find searches like [donate to Sandy] spiking as well.

We hope you enjoy exploring what people around the world were searching for in 2012. It’s quite a snapshot of what makes us human: a blend of guilty pleasures and higher pursuits.

Posted by Amit Singhal, SVP & Google Fellow

It’s easy to have a love-hate relationship with the holidays. On the one hand, it’s a joyous time of the year full of festivities and delicious baked goods. On the other hand, it’s stressful. For something like traveling which is already stressful on its own, traveling during the holidays can feel like twice the trouble.

One way to cut down on some of the stress before you head to the airport is to plan ahead. Let’s say this year you’re traveling to France for the holidays. Here are some quick answers that can make your planning faster and easier -- we recently redesigned these features to be richer and more interactive on mobile and tablet, and now you’ll see them on desktop as well, so you can plan ahead whether you’re at home or on the go:

• Figure out your budget. Since luggage space is limited and you don’t want to pay an overage fee, you may want to buy your gifts when you land in France. Find the currency exchange rate ahead of time so you can figure out how much that $15 (USD) fruitcake actually costs in euros by searching [15 usd in euro] or [french currency].

• Learn about French traditions. Friends who live in Paris have invited you to their reveillon dinner. Trouble is, you don’t know what that means. You can quickly find the answer by typing [define reveillon] in Google.

• Plan your holiday Hangouts. Even though you’ll be oceans apart, you can still wish your family a happy holidays in person. Schedule a date for a Google+ Hangout, but don’t forget to factor in the time difference, which you can figure out by searching [time in france].

• Track your flight before you leave the house. To avoid arriving at the airport only to find out your flight’s been delayed for hours, you can quickly check the flight status by typing the flight number like [united airlines 942] or [UA942], into the search box.

Other quick answers we’re updating on desktop over the next few weeks are finance, unit conversion, holiday and sunrise times, and weather. And, of course, you can also make your holidays easier to manage using things like our Flight Search feature to book your trip, Google+ to share your photos with family and friends, Google Docs to track your holiday spending, and more.

Happy holidays!

Posted by Robert Stacey, Software Engineer

Over the next few days, when you search in Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Japanese, Russian, or Italian, you’ll start seeing new answers from the Knowledge Graph -- our project to map out real-world things as diverse as movies, bridges and planets. You can now quickly and easily discover new information relevant to your language and country.

So in Japanese, your search for [白鵬] will bring up the top-ranked sumo wrestler, including his heya and ranks, and help you discover other highly-ranked sumo wrestlers. Or a Russian search for [петр I] will help you research the country’s historic Tzar Peter the Great, and explore connections to his family and other famous rulers. And if you’re a fan of football in Brazil, [corinthians] will show information including that team’s most recent championship wins -- all in your language.


This is more than just translation. The Knowledge Graph needs to account for different meanings of the same word -- “football” means something quite different in the U.S. than in Europe. It also needs to recognize what's most important in a particular region. The graph now covers 570 million entities, 18 billion facts and connections, and about three times as many queries globally as when we first launched it -- we’ll keep working on making it more useful for you.

Posted by Aaron Brown, Senior Product Manager, Search

We get a lot of queries for medicine on Google. So to make it quick and easy for you to learn about medications, we’ll start showing key facts -- side effects, related medications, links to in-depth resources, and more -- right on the search results page.


This data comes from the U.S. FDA, the National Library of Medicine, and the Department of Veterans Affairs, among others. It’s part of the Knowledge Graph -- our project to map out billions of real-world things, from famous artists to roller coasters to planets (and now medications). We hope you find this useful, but remember that these results do not act as medical advice.

Posted by Aaron Brown, Senior Product Manager, Search

You’ll notice a new simpler, cleaner design on the search results page — we’ve been working on ways to create a consistent search experience across the wide variety of devices and screen sizes people use today. We started with tablets last year, got it to mobile phones a few weeks ago, and are now rolling out to the desktop.

With the new design, there’s a bit more breathing room, and more focus on the answers you’re looking for, whether from web results or from a feature like the Knowledge Graph:


The same advanced tools you’re used to are still there when you need them. Just click on “Search tools” to filter or drill down on your results:



Posted by Jon Wiley, Lead Designer, Google Search

If you’ve moved to Windows 8 and are getting acquainted with it, you may be looking for a couple of your favorite Google products that you use every day. To help you get the best experience possible on Google and across the web, we’ve designed and built a new Google Search app and Chrome browser for Windows 8 and created a simple site to help you get your Google back.



 





The Google Search app comes with a clean and recognizable user interface. Our new voice search lets you naturally speak questions. The image search and image previews are built for swiping. And, as usual, you get immediate results as you type with Google Instant. The doodles you enjoy on special occasions will be right there on the homepage and even show up on the Google tile on your start screen.





The Chrome browser is the same Chrome you know and love, with some customizations to optimize for touchscreens, including larger buttons and the ability to keep Chrome open next to your other favorite apps. It delivers the fast, secure web experience you’ve come to expect from Chrome on all your devices.





To get both Google Search and Chrome installed on your Windows 8 machine, head to our site and learn how to get your familiar Google apps back.



Posted by Tamar Yehoshua, Product Management Director, Search

Search is a lot about discovery, and the Knowledge Graph, our map of real-world people, places and things, is designed to help you find new information easily. Have you ever flipped through the “People also search for” section of the Knowledge Graph panels and wondered -- just how are those two people connected anyway? People had fun with our Bacon Number calculator, which revealed some, often surprising, connections, and now we’re taking it one step further. Just mouse over or click on a thumbnail to see an explanation of how it’s connected to the subject of your search:



We’re starting by showing major co-starring roles between actors, movies, and TV shows as well as highlighting family connections amongst famous people in the Knowledge Graph. These connections won’t show up all the time, but when there is an interesting explanation available, you can now see it at a glance. Happy browsing!

Posted by Golan Pundak, Engineer

(Cross-posted on the Official Gmail Blog)

When you’re looking for something, you should be able to find what you need quickly and easily without needing to think about where it might be, whether it's in your email or out on the public web. That’s why this past August we opened a field trial allowing you to sign up to get information from Gmail right from the Google search box.

We’ve gotten very positive feedback from those of you testing it out -- such as this note: “The Gmail results feature is awesome! The fact that it's all integrated into one screen is huge.” Many testers have requested being able to find Drive files as well -- as one of you put it, “It would be awesome if I could search my google drive from google search as well :)”.

So starting today, you can sign up for a new and expanded field trial that makes it easier to find your stuff across Google, whether you’re searching on Google.com or searching in Gmail.

In Gmail, as you begin to type into the search box, you'll instantly start seeing relevant emails from Gmail as well as results from Google Drive, Google Calendar, and more:


Similarly, when you search on Google.com, your results will include relevant information and messages from Gmail (something familiar to those who joined the original field trial) and now -- new in this field trial -- also files, documents, spreadsheets and more from Google Drive:


To give this a try, please visit the updated field trial page and select Join the field trial. Please note that this trial is only accessible in English and for @gmail.com addresses (not available on Google Apps accounts). And keep the feedback coming!

Posted by Bram Moolenaar, Software Engineer

Our latest installment of search quality highlights is here with 65 changes to report for August and September. As you may recall from our last post, in cases where we don’t have a descriptive name, we are using a unique ID number. August and September were both busy months as we launched new features, expanded the Knowledge Graph globally in English, and worked towards building the search engine of the future.

Here’s the list for August:

• #82862. [project “Page Quality”] This launch helped you find more high-quality content from trusted sources.
• #83197. [project “Autocomplete”] This launch introduced changes in the way we generate query predictions for Autocomplete.
• #83818. [project “Answers”] This change improved display of the movie showtimes feature.
• #83819. [project “Answers”] We improved display of the MLB search feature.
• #83820. [project “Answers”] This change improved display of the finance search feature.
• #83384. [project “Universal Search”] We made improvements to driving directions in Turkish.
• #83459. [project “Alternative Search Methods”] We added support for answers about new stock exchanges for voice queries.
• LTS. [project “Other Ranking Components”] We improved our web ranking to determine what pages are relevant for queries containing locations.
• Maru. [project “SafeSearch”] We updated SafeSearch to improve the handling of adult video content in videos mode for queries that are not looking for adult content.
• #83135. [project “Query Understanding”] This change updated term-proximity scoring.
• #83659. [project “Answers”] We made improvements to display of the local time search feature.
• #83105. [project “Snippets”] We refreshed data used to generate sitelinks.
• Imadex. [project “Freshness”] This change updated handling of stale content and applies a more granular function based on document age.
• #83613. [project “Universal Search”] This change added the ability to show a more appropriately sized video thumbnail on mobile when the user clearly expresses intent for a video.
• #83443. [project “Knowledge Graph”] We added a lists and collections component to the Knowledge Graph.
• #83442. [project “Snippets”] This change improved a signal we use to determine how relevant a possible result title actually is for the page.
• #83012. [project “Knowledge Graph] The Knowledge Graph displays factual information and refinements related to many types of searches. This launch extended the Knowledge Graph to English-speaking locales beyond the U.S.
• #84063. [project “Answers”] We added better understanding of natural language searches for the calculator feature, focused on currencies and arithmetic.
• nearby. [project “User Context”] We improved the precision and coverage of our system to help you find more relevant local web results. Now we’re better able to identify web results that are local to the user, and rank them appropriately.
• essence. [project “Autocomplete”] This change introduced entity predictions in autocomplete. Now Google will predict not just the string of text you might be looking for, but the actual real-world thing. Clarifying text will appear in the drop-down box to help you disambiguate your search.
• #83821. [project “Answers”] We introduced better natural language parsing for display of the conversions search feature.
• #82279. [project “Other Ranking Components”] We changed to fewer results for some queries to show the most relevant results as quickly as possible.
• #82407. [project “Other Search Features”] For pages that we do not crawl because of robots.txt, we are usually unable to generate a snippet for users to preview what's on the page. This change added a replacement snippet that explains that there's no description available because of robots.txt.
• #83709. [project “Other Ranking Components”] This change was a minor bug fix related to the way links are used in ranking.
• #82546. [project “Indexing”] We made back-end improvements to video indexing to improve the efficiency of our systems.
• Palace. [project “SafeSearch”] This change decreased the amount of adult content that will show up in Image Search mode when SafeSearch is set to strict.
• #84010. [project “Page Quality”] We refreshed data for the "Panda" high-quality sites algorithm. 
• #84083. [project “Answers”] This change improved the display of the movie showtimes search feature.
• gresshoppe. [project “Answers”] We updated the display of the flight search feature for searches without a specified destination.
• #83670. [project “Snippets”] We made improvements to surface fewer generic phrases like "comments on" and "logo" in search result titles.
• #83777. [project “Synonyms”] This change made improvements to rely on fewer "low-confidence" synonyms when the user's original query has good results.
• #83377. [project “User Context”] We made improvements to show more relevant local results.
• #83484. [project “Refinements”] This change helped users refine their searches to find information about the right person, particularly when there are many prominent people with the same name.
• #82872. [project “SafeSearch”] In "strict" SafeSearch mode we remove results if they are not very relevant. This change previously launched in English, and this change expanded it internationally.
• Knowledge Graph Carousel. [project “Knowledge Graph”] This change expanded the Knowledge Graph carousel feature globally in English.
• Sea. [project “SafeSearch”] This change helped prevent adult content from appearing when SafeSearch is in "strict" mode.
• #84259. [project “Autocomplete”] This change tweaked the display of real-world entities in autocomplete to reduce repetitiveness. With this change, we don't show the entity name (displayed to the right of the dash) when it's fully contained in the query.
• TSSPC. [project “Spelling”] This change used spelling algorithms to improve the relevance of long-tail autocomplete predictions.
• #83689. [project “Page Quality”] This launch helped you find more high-quality content from trusted sources.
• #84068. [project “Answers”] We improved the display of the currency conversion search feature.
• #84586. [project “Other Ranking Components”] This change improved how we rank documents for queries with location terms.

Here’s the list for September:

• Dot. [project “Autocomplete”] We improved cursor-aware predictions in Chinese, Japanese and Korean languages. Suppose you're searching for "restaurants" and then decide you want "Italian restaurants." With cursor-aware predictions, once you put your cursor back to the beginning of the search box and start typing "I," the prediction system will make predictions for "Italian," not completions of "Irestaurants."
• #84288. [project “Autocomplete”] This change made improvements to show more fresh predictions in autocomplete for Korean.
• trafficmaps. [project “Universal Search”] With this change, we began showing a traffic map for queries like "traffic from A to B" or "traffic between A and B."
• #84394. [project “Page Quality”] This launch helped you find more high-quality content from trusted sources.
• #84652. [project “Snippets”] We currently generate titles for PDFs (and other non-html docs) when converting the documents to HTML. These auto-generated titles are usually good, but this change made them better by looking at other signals.
• #83761. [project “Freshness”] This change helped you find the latest content from a given site when two or more documents from the same domain are relevant for a given search query.
• #83406. [project “Query Understanding”] We improved our ability to show relevant Universal Search results by better understanding when a search has strong image intent, local intent, video intent, etc.
• espd. [project “Autocomplete”] This change provided entities in autocomplete that are more likely to be relevant to the user's country. See blog post for background.
• #83391. [project “Answers”] This change internationalized and improved the precision of the symptoms search feature.
• #82876. [project “Autocomplete”] We updated autocomplete predictions when predicted queries share the same last word.
• #83304. [project “Knowledge Graph”] This change updated signals that determine when to show summaries of topics in the right-hand panel.
• #84211. [project “Snippets”] This launch led to better snippet titles.
• #81360. [project “Translation and Internationalization”] With this launch, we began showing local URLs to users instead of general homepages where applicable (e.g. blogspot.ch instead of blogspot.com for users in Switzerland). That’s relevant, for example, for global companies where the product pages are the same, but the links for finding the nearest store are country-dependent.
• #81999. [project “Translation and Internationalization”] We revamped code for understanding which documents are relevant for particular regions and languages automatically (if not annotated by the webmaster).
• Cobra. [project “SafeSearch”] We updated SafeSearch algorithms to better detect adult content.
• #937372. [project “Other Search Features”] The translate search tool is available through the link "Translated foreign pages" in the sidebar of the search result page. In addition, when we guess that a non-English search query would have better results from English documents, we'll show a feature at the bottom of the search results page to suggest users try the translate search tool. This change improved the relevance of when we show the suggestion.
• #84460. [project “Snippets”] This change helped to better identify important phrases on a given webpage.
• #80435. [project “Autocomplete”] This change improves autocomplete predictions based on the user's Web History (for signed-in users).
• #83901. [project “Synonyms”] This change improved the use of synonyms for search terms to more often return results that are relevant to the user's intention.

And here are a few other changes we’ve blogged about since last time:

• An update to our search algorithms
• Voice Search arrives in 13 new languages
• Structured Data Testing Tool
• Insights into what the world is searching for -- the new Google Trends
• Travelers can now access Flight Search from their tablets

Posted by Pandu Nayak, Member of Technical Staff

(Cross-posted on the ITA Software by Google blog) 

More and more travelers are using tablets to search for and book travel. In fact, 46% of all US tablet owners who search for travel, actually purchase via their tablet. We also know that people use their tablets differently than they use their desktop. That’s why we’ve optimized our Flight Search experience for those who prefer to search with a tablet, such as a Nexus 7 or an iPad.

Starting today, travelers can search for and book flights on any tablet device by going to http://www.google.com/flights/. With the touch of your finger, you can easily explore places to visit on the map and see prices updated in real-time for each destination.



              


If you’re flexible with your dates you can also use our lowest fares tool and scroll across days, weeks and months to find the cheapest dates to take your trip. Your results will be updated super-fast, even when you switch dates or destinations.



                 


We hope this makes planning your next trip easier and more enjoyable -- whether you’re using your desktop, laptop, mobile device or tablet. We look forward to your continued feedback on Flight Search.

Posted by Rani Manoharan, User Interface Designer, Travel

Now we are merging Insights for Search into Google Trends, wrapping it all up in a clean new interface to give you a clearer view of what’s on the world’s mind. The new Google Trends now includes features from both products and makes it easier and more intuitive to dig into the data. We’ve updated the line chart and map using HTML5 based Google Chart Tools so you can now load the page on your mobile devices, visualize the results without scrolling, and get Hot Searches not just for the U.S., but also India, Japan, and Singapore.

So, what exactly can you learn about people’s interests from Google Trends? A few of our recent favorites:

• [beach] and [snow] are just about inverse throughout the year
• West Virginia leads the US in searches for spooky things (play around at the bottom left!)
• Interest in [red hot chili peppers] shifted around Europe this summer as the band toured there -- see this time-lapse map:

We’ve seen so many examples of insights gleaned from Trends, from the Oscars to the Super Bowl; from shopping to elections; from our yearly Google Zeitgeist summary to the many we’ve found around the web.

Google Trends data can be used to better understand global trends -- identifying health trends such as in flu trends, nowcasting in economics, and studies on the predictability of search trends. And it has been used in many scientific articles across disciplines.

There’s so much in this data for journalists, academics, and anybody who’s curious about the world to explore, and we’d love to see what you find. Email us your favorites at trends-stories@google.com.

Posted by Yossi Matias, Senior Engineering Director in Search, Head of Israel R&D Center

(Cross-posted on the ITA Software by Google blog)

If you’re thinking about attending the 179th Oktoberfest, there’s still time. It runs September 22 -October 7 in Munich, Germany. Just in case you’re planning a trip, we’ve assembled some tips for how you can use Google tools like Flight Search, Hotel Finder, Maps and Transit to help you plan an amazing trip -- whether you’re using your desktop, laptop or on your Android device.


If you want to figure out the best beer tents to visit, this Google Map will be a great place to turn during the event (will be live 09/22/12). When the pin over the tent is green, the tent still has seating and is open. When the pin is red, the tent is closed because of overfilling.

My favorite tent is the Hippodrom, a smaller tent frequented by a younger crowd -- and recently discovered by celebrities. It offers beer -- of course -- but also has a sekt (sparkling wine) bar that is pretty stylish. You should plan on arriving early if you want to visit.

You can also see live pics from Oktoberfest by clicking on various webcams on the map. This capability is very useful in providing information to help you choose the tents you’re most interested in visiting.


You might also want to plan ahead and consider the crowds and traffic. With Google Maps for Android, you can take a look at live traffic to see if you want to drive -- or choose to just walk, bike or take transit.

If you want to see more of Germany, you can use Google Transit to reach other cities such as Hamburg or Frankfurt. This navigation tool includes information about Deutsche Bahn (DB) trains and recommends the best transit options, taking into account various factors such as duration and number of Umstiege (transfers/stops). The options are then shown on the map, along with time, train type and duration of the trip. This is especially handy because it’s possible to click through from the transit options page, to purchase your tickets on bahn.de without needing to reenter the dates!

And if you’re a non-Bavarian who doesn’t speak German, don’t worry. You can use Google Translate or the official Oktoberfest dictionary to communicate with the locals.

So now that your interest is piqued, you’ll probably want to plan a trip right away. You can do so by going to www.google.com and searching for [flights to Munich]. Your departure city will be automatically recognized; mine was New York City. As you change your dates, prices will instantly update.

             

I prefer nonstop flights, so I clicked on “Nonstop” to get a list of flight times available at the $1,073 USD price and then evaluated various attributes of the flights -- including the cost of checked bags for this ticket. Once I picked the flights that worked for me, I clicked the red “Book” button to make my booking via the airline’s website.

                

Finally, you can use Hotel Finder to find hotels near Oktoberfest in Munich. You can do this by going to www.google.com/hotelfinder and entering [Oktoberfest Munich, Germany], along with the dates you plan to be in town. You can use the reviews, images, ratings and pricing information to create a shortlist. Once I selected the hotel I was interested in, I used the red booking button which took me to www.booking.com to complete my reservation.

                

We hope you found these tips helpful. Whether you end up hitting the Wiesn tents this October, or visiting Germany at some point in the future, we hope to help you plan your trip and connect with travel suppliers with ease.

Posted by Noam Ben Haim, Senior Product Manager, Travel

(Cross-posted on the Google Student Blog)

If you missed Power Searching with Google a few months ago or were unable to complete the course the first time around, now’s your chance to sign up again for our free online course that aims to empower our users with the tools and knowledge to find what they’re looking for more quickly and easily.

The community-based course features six 50-minute classes along with interactive activities and the opportunity to hear from search experts and Googlers about how search works. Beginning September 24, you can take the classes over a two-week period, share what you learn with other students in a community forum, and complete the course assessments to earn a certificate of completion.

During the course’s first run in July, people told us how they not only liked learning about new features and more efficient ways to use Google, but they also enjoyed sharing tips and learning from one another through the forums and Hangouts. Ninety-six percent of people who completed the course also said they liked the format and would be interested in taking similar courses, so we plan to offer a suite of upcoming courses in the coming months, including Advanced Power Searching.

Stay tuned for further announcements on those upcoming courses, and don’t forget to register now for Power Searching with Google. You’ll learn about things like how to search by color, image, and time and how to solve harder trivia questions like our A Google a Day questions. We’ll see you when we start up in two weeks!

Posted by Dan Russell, Uber Tech Lead, Search Quality & User Happiness

Last month, we showed how you can now get answers to your questions with the help of the Knowledge Graph even when the best answer is not just a single person or thing, but a collection or list of items. When looking for [cedar point rides], you see a carousel of popular roller coasters at the amusement park, drawing on our Knowledge Graph and the collective intelligence of the Web. The feature was initially available in English on google.com, and we’re now taking our first steps to make it available more widely around the world. Over the next couple days, we’ll begin showing the carousel for factual lists to our English users on all Google domains across the world.



This works for a variety of locally interesting lists like [aamir khan movies], [cast of the it crowd] or [mountains of the alps] or more general queries like [saturn’s moons] or [dog breeds]. The carousel makes it easy to explore the items in the list -- it stays attached to the top of the search results page so you can flip through the items easily and dive in deeper if something catches your interest. Happy exploring!

Posted by Kavi Goel, Product Manager

The two of us are old enough to remember the thrill of seeing Neil Armstrong walk on the moon in the summer of 1969. Many things have changed since then, and incredible progress has been made in some areas. As we reflect back on our own experience, and try to match today's world to 1969, we decided to compare the amount of computation available to NASA engineers then versus what's available now.

The Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) on board the lunar module (LM) executed instructions at a speed of about 40 KHz (or 0.00004 GHz), about 100,000 times slower than a high-end laptop today. There was also a similar real-time computer built into the Saturn V rocket. On the ground, NASA had access to some of the most powerful computers of the day: five IBM model 360/75 mainframe computers, each about 250 times faster than the AGC. They were running nearly 24/7, calculating lift-off data and orbits, monitoring biomedical data during the mission, and performing numerous other calculations.

We compared that to what Google does today, and we found that:

It takes about the same amount of computing to answer one Google Search query as all the computing done -- in flight and on the ground -- for the entire Apollo program!

When you enter a single query in the Google search box, or just speak it to your phone, you set in motion as much computing as it took to send Neil Armstrong and eleven other astronauts to the moon. Not just the actual flights, but all the computing done throughout the planning and execution of the 11-year, 17 mission Apollo program. That’s how much computing has advanced. It is easy to take this for granted, but this computing power helps make the world a better place and opens the door for amazing things to come.

Posted by Udi Manber and Peter Norvig

(Cross-posted from the Google Research Blog and Google Public Policy Blog)

At Google, we're constantly trying to make important collections of information more useful to the world. Since 2006, we’ve let people discover, search, and read United States patents online. Starting this week, you can do the same for the millions of ideas that have been submitted to the European Patent Office, such as this one.

Typically, patents are granted only if an invention is new and not obvious. To explain why an invention is new, inventors will usually cite prior art such as earlier patent applications or journal articles. Determining the novelty of a patent can be difficult, requiring a laborious search through many sources, and so we’ve built a Prior Art Finder to make this process easier. With a single click, it searches multiple sources for related content that existed at the time the patent was filed.

We’re back with the latest in our series of search quality highlights. We have a couple months to make up for, so this list is a doozy with 86 changes. You might notice we’ve made one subtle tweak as compared with prior blog posts. We’re no longer using separate descriptive names and codenames (we’re just listing one or the other). Many times the descriptive names really just repeated the information in the short description. Names are sometimes useful for providing a unique identifier for a given change, so in cases where we don’t have a name, we’re adding an ID number.

Here’s the list for June:

• uefa-euro1. [project codename “Answers”] Addition of a live result showing schedule and scores of the EURO 2012 games (European championship of national soccer teams).
• #82293. [project codename “Answers”] Improved dictionary search feature by adding support for more natural language searches.
• Better HTML5 resource caching for mobile. [project codename “Mobile”] We’ve improved caching of different components of the search results page, dramatically reducing latency in a number of cases.
• ng2. [project codename “Other Ranking Components”] Better ordering of top results using a new and improved ranking function for combining several key ranking features.
• Ref-16. [project codename “Other Ranking Components”] Changes to an "official pages" algorithm to improve internationalization.
• Bamse. [project codename “Page Quality”] This launch helps you find more high-quality content from trusted sources.
• Bamse-17L. [project codename “Page Quality”] This launch helps you find more high-quality content from trusted sources.
• GreenLandII. [project codename “Page Quality”] We've incorporated new data into the Panda algorithm to better detect high-quality sites and pages.
• #82353. [project codename “Page Quality”] This change refreshes data for the Panda high-quality sites algorithm.
• SuperQ2. [project codename “Image”] We've updated a signal for Google Images to help return more on-topic image search results.
• #82743. [project codename “Answers”] Changes to the calculator feature to improve recognition of queries containing "and," such as [4 times 3 and a half].
• komodo. [project codename “Query Understanding”] Data refresh for system used to better understand and search for long-tail queries.
• #82580. [project codename “Answers”] This is an improvement for showing the sunrise and sunset times search feature.
• PitCode. [project codename “Answers”] This launch adds live results for Nascar, MotoGP, and IndyCar. This is in addition to Formula1 results, which were already available.
• timeob. [project codename “Answers”] We've improved natural language detection for the time feature to better understand questions like, "What time is it in India?"
• #81933. [project codename “Synonyms”] This launch improves use of query synonyms in ranking. Now we're less likely to show documents where the synonym has a different meaning than the original search term.
• #82496. [project codename “Answers”] Changes made to the movie showtimes feature on mobile to improve recognition of natural language queries and overall coverage.
• #82367. [project codename “Other Ranking Components”] This launch helps you find more high-quality content from trusted sources.
• #82699. [project codename “Other Search Features”] We've made it easier to quickly compare places. Now you can hover over a local result and see information about that place on the right-hand side.
• CapAndGown. [project codename “Image”] On many webpages, the most important images are closely related to the overall subject matter of the page. This project helps you find these salient images more often.
• #82769. [project codename “Answers”] Improvements to the calculator feature on mobile to improve handling of queries that contain both words and numbers such as [4 times 3 divided by 2].
• Vuvuzela. [project codename “SafeSearch”] We've updated SafeSearch to unify the handling of adult video content in videos mode and in the main search results. Explicit video thumbnails are now filtered more consistently.
• #82537. [project codename “Answers”] We've enabled natural language detection for the currency conversion feature to better understand questions like, "What is $500 in euros?"
• #82519. [project codename “Answers”] We've enabled natural language detection for the flight status feature to better understand questions about flight arrival times and status.
• #82879. [project codename “Answers”] We've improved the triggering for the "when is" feature and understanding of queries like, "When is Mother's Day?"
• wobnl0330. [project codename “Answers”] Improvements to display of the weather search feature.
• Lime. [project codename “Freshness”] This change improves the interaction between various search components to improve search results for searches looking for fresh content.
• gas station. [project codename “Snippets”] This change removes the boilerplate text in sitelinks titles, keeping only the information useful to the user.
• #81776. [project codename “Answers”] We've improved natural language detection for the unit conversion feature to better understand questions like, "What is 5 miles in kilometers?"
• #81439. [project codename “Answers”] Improved display of the finance feature for voice search queries on mobile.
• #82666. [project codename “Page Quality”] This launch helps you find more high-quality content from trusted sources.
• #82541. [project codename “Other Ranking Components”] This is one of multiple projects that we're working on to make our system for clustering web results better and simpler.
• gaupe. [project codename “Universal Search”] Improves display of the flights search feature. Now, this result shows for queries with destinations outside the US, such as [flights from Austin to London].
• #82887. [project codename “Answers”] We've improved natural language processing for the dictionary search feature.
• gallium-2. [project codename “Synonyms”] This change improves synonyms inside concepts.
• zinc-4. [project codename “Synonyms”] This change improves efficiency by not computing synonyms in certain cases.
• Manzana2. [project codename “Snippets”] This launch improves clustering and ranking of links in the expanded sitelinks feature.
• #82921. [project codename “Alternative Search Methods”] We've improved finance results to better understand finance-seeking queries spoken on mobile.
• #82936. [project codename “Answers”] Improved display of the weather search feature, so you can ask [weather in california] or [is it hot in italy].
• #82935. [project codename “Answers”] We've improved natural language detection for the sunrise/sunset feature.
• #82460. [project codename “Snippets”] With this change we're using synonyms to better generate accurate titles for web results.
• #82953. [project codename “Answers”] This change improves detection of queries about weather.
• PandaMay. [project codename “Search Quality”] We launched a data refresh for our Panda high-quality sites algorithm.
• ItsyBitsy. [project codename “Images”] To improve the quality of image results, we filter tiny, unhelpful images at the bottom of our image results pages.
• localtimeob. [project codename “Answers”] We've improved display of the local time search feature.
• #82536. [project codename “Answers”] We've improved natural language detection to better understand queries about baseball and return the latest baseball information about MLB, such as schedules and the latest scores.
• Improvements to Images Universal ranking. [project codename “Universal Search”] We significantly improved our ability to show Images Universal on infrequently searched-for queries.
• absum3. [project codename “Snippets”] This launch helps us select better titles to display in the search results. This is a change to our algorithm that will specifically improve the titles for pages that are in non-Latin based languages.
• #83051. [project codename “Answers”] We've improved display of local business information in certain mobile use cases. In particular, we'll highlight information relevant to the search, including phone numbers, addresses, hours and more.
• calc2-random. [project codename “Answers”] This change improves our understanding of calculator-seeking queries.
• #82961. [project codename “Alternative Search Methods”] When you search for directions to or from a location on your mobile device without specifying the start point, we'll return results starting from your current position.
• #82984. [project codename “Universal Search”] This was previously available for users searching on google.com in English, and now it's available for all users searching in English on any domain.
• #82150. [project codename “Spelling”] Refresh of our algorithms for spelling systems in eight languages.
• NoPathsForClustering. [project codename “Other Ranking Components”] We've made our algorithm for clustering web results from the same site or same path (same URL up until the last slash) more consistent. This is one of multiple projects that we're working on to make our clustering system better and simpler.
• Hamel. [project codename “Page Quality”] This change updates a model we use to help you find high-quality pages with unique content.
• #81977. [project codename “Synonyms”] This change updates our synonyms systems to make it less likely we'll return adult content when users aren't looking for it.
• Homeland. [project codename “Autocomplete”] This is an improvement to autocomplete that will help users to get predicted queries that are more relevant to their local country.

Here’s the list for July:

• #82948. [project codename “Other Search Features”] We've improved our natural language processing to improve display of our movie showtimes feature.
• yoyo. [project codename “Snippets”] This change leads to more useful text in sitelinks.
• popcorn. [project codename “Snippets”] We've made a minor update to our algorithm that detects if a page is an "article." This change facilitates better snippets.
• Golden Eagle. [project codename “Autocomplete”] When Google Instant is turned off, we'll sometimes show a direct link to a site in the autocomplete predictions. With this change we refreshed the data for those predictions.
• #82301. [project codename “Indexing”] This change improves an aspect of our serving systems to save capacity and improve latency.
• #82392. [project codename “Indexing”] This launch improves the efficiency of the Book Search ranking algorithms, making them more consistent with Web Search.
• Challenger. [project codename “Snippets”] This is another change that will help get rid of generic boilerplate text in Web results' titles, particularly for sitelinks.
• #83166. [project codename “Universal Search”] This change is a major update to Google Maps data for the following regions: CZ, GR, HR, IE, IT, VA, SM, MO,PT, SG, LS. This new data will appear in maps universal results.
• #82515. [project codename “Translation and Internationalization”] This change improves the detection of queries that would benefit from translated results.
• bergen. [project codename “Other Ranking Components”] This is one of multiple projects that we're working on to make our system for clustering web results better and simpler.
• Panda JK. [project codename “Page Quality”] We launched Panda on google.co.jp and google.co.kr to promote more high-quality sites for users in Japan and Korea.
• rrfix4. [project codename “Freshness”] This is a bug fix to a freshness algorithm. This change turns off a freshness algorithm component in certain cases when it should not be affecting the results.
• eventhuh4. [project codename “Knowledge Graph”] We'll show a list of upcoming events in the Knowledge Graph for city-related searches such as [san francisco] and [events in san francisco].
• #83483. [project codename “Universal Search”] This change helps surface navigation directions directly in search results for more queries.
• Zivango. [project codename “Refinements”] This change leads to more diverse search refinements.
• #80568. [project codename “Snippets”] This change improves our algorithm for generating site hierarchies for display in search result snippets.
• Labradoodle. [project codename “SafeSearch”] We've updated SafeSearch algorithms to better detect adult content.
• JnBamboo. [project codename “Page Quality”] We’ve updated data for our Panda high-quality sites algorithm.
• #83242. [project codename “Universal Search”] This change improves news universal display by using entities from the Knowledge Graph.
• #75921. [project codename “Autocomplete”] For some time we've shown personalized predictions in Autocomplete for users who've enabled Web History on google.com in English. With this change, we're internationalizing the feature.
• #83301. [project codename “Answers”] Similar to the live results we provide for sports like baseball or European football, you can now search on Google and find rich, detailed information about the latest schedule, medal counts, events, and record-breaking moments for the world's largest sporting spectacle.
• #83432. [project codename “Autocomplete”] This change helps users find more fresh trending queries in Japanese as part of autocomplete.

And here are some changes we’ve shared elsewhere:

• Flight Search for Canada
• Updated Hot Searches list
• Update to Search by Image
• Interactive Weather Visualization Now on Tablet
• More detailed maps in parts of Europe, Africa and Asia
• Google with Handwrite for Mobile and Tablet Search
• Structured Data Dashboard

Posted by Scott Huffman, Engineering Director

We aim to provide a great experience for our users and have developed over 200 signals to ensure our search algorithms deliver the best possible results. Starting next week, we will begin taking into account a new signal in our rankings: the number of valid copyright removal notices we receive for any given site. Sites with high numbers of removal notices may appear lower in our results. This ranking change should help users find legitimate, quality sources of content more easily—whether it’s a song previewed on NPR’s music website, a TV show on Hulu or new music streamed from Spotify.

Since we re-booted our copyright removals over two years ago, we’ve been given much more data by copyright owners about infringing content online. In fact, we’re now receiving and processing more copyright removal notices every day than we did in all of 2009—more than 4.3 million URLs in the last 30 days alone. We will now be using this data as a signal in our search rankings.

Only copyright holders know if something is authorized, and only courts can decide if a copyright has been infringed; Google cannot determine whether a particular webpage does or does not violate copyright law. So while this new signal will influence the ranking of some search results, we won’t be removing any pages from search results unless we receive a valid copyright removal notice from the rights owner. And we’ll continue to provide "counter-notice" tools so that those who believe their content has been wrongly removed can get it reinstated. We’ll also continue to be transparent about copyright removals.

Posted by Amit Singhal, SVP, Engineering

Search has always been about getting you the answers you need as quickly as possible. When you’re looking for the weather forecast or a stock quote, solving an equation, or converting kilograms into pounds, you’ve been able to see those answers right away on Google.

We’ve recently made improvements to some of these answers to make them richer, more beautiful, and more interactive. When you search for weather on tablet and mobile, you’ll see a new 10-day and hourly weather forecast that you can interact with. Our calculator feature also got a makeover—you can search for any calculation on google.com and you’ll get a fully functional scientific calculator at your fingertips.

Today when you search on mobile or tablet, you’ll see some more improvements in the way we provide these quick answers, including better understanding what information you need and surfacing the most relevant information for you. For example, in our flight status quick answer, we’ve included a flight progress indicator and increased the size of arrival and departure times so you can quickly see when your loved ones will be landing.


Other quick answer features we’re updating on mobile and tablet cover finance, currency conversion, unit conversion, dictionary definitions, local time lookup, and holiday and sunrise times. In all these quick answers we’ve simplified the experience so you can focus on the answer you were looking for. For example, for unit conversions the answer is displayed prominently for a question like [how many miles are 42 kilometers]. If you’d like to convert another unit of measure like [how many yards in a mile], you can simply tap the card and see the full unit converter right there.


These changes are rolling out to those searching on google.com in English on mobile and tablet. Stay tuned as we continue to develop our quick answers and bring these beautiful designs to desktop and international users as well.

Posted by Jeromy Henry, User Experience Designer