We hope you enjoyed exploring the year in searches yesterday as part of the annual Year-End Google Zeitgeist. Now that you've had a chance to see the video, explore the charts, and dive into what's on people's minds everywhere from Sydney to Omaha, you may be interested to learn about some updates to Google Trends that can extend the Zeitgeist experience year-round. As of yesterday, you'll see a number of updates to help you discover interesting tools and stories, find locally relevant information, and do it all on the go on your mobile phone.

A new homepage to help you discover.
In the past, when you landed on Google Trends, you'd see the most recent Hot Searches. But Trends can help you do much more than just see what's trending each day. With Top Charts, you can explore how different topics stack up against each other, from athletes, to song lyrics, to stocks. You can also search or click "Explore In-Depth" and look up detailed reports for any topic you want (including entities and topics). We've been amazed by the stories people come up with using Trends, and the new homepage is designed to help you dive in and make your own discoveries.


Top Charts in 72 countries, Hot Searches in 47.
If you're interested in trends outside the US, we hope you'll enjoy a more locally relevant experience with three updates. First, now you'll find annual Top Charts for 72 countries (was US-only before). There's plenty to dig into, with 1,000+ annual charts for 2013 and 2,000+ from previous year’s Zeitgeist lists. Second, if you want to see what's hot right now in Vietnam, or Colombia, or Italy -- now you can -- with Hot Searches in 47 countries (up from 14). Finally, you'll find support for right-to-left scripts (RTL) and six new languages (Arabic, Bengali, Farsi, Hebrew, Malay, and Malayam). To check out all the local Top Charts and Hot Searches, select a region in the upper left-hand corner of Google Trends.


A fast mobile experience.
Now when you land in Vietnam, not only can you check out what's hot locally with Top Charts and Hot Searches, you can finally do it on your mobile phone in an optimized experience. You'll find a much more efficient and touchable interface, enabling you to check out what's Trending, who's topping the charts, or even explore complex search data… all while you're on the go.


Posted by Nemo Tamir, Software Engineer

Parlez-vous français? Sprechen Sie Deutsch? あなたは日本語が話せますか？

Well if you do speak French, German, or Japanese, Google can now help you find information faster by speaking out answers to your questions in your native language. English speakers have been hearing Google respond to their spoken queries for a while and we're now bringing some of the functionality to people in other parts of the world.

To try it out, simply tap the microphone in the search box and ask for anything you’re looking for. If you need some coffee in Munich, just say “Wo bekomme ich Kaffee in München?” to get a list of local options. Wondering what the height of the Eiffel tower is? Get a quick answer by asking, “Quelle est la hauteur de la Tour Eiffel?”. Maybe you need to know who invented the transistor ? Try asking in Japanese for “トランジスタを発明したのはだれ？”


You’ll now get spoken answers to many of your questions in French, German, and Japanese with the Google Search app on your Android phone as well as iPhone or iPad — just make sure you have the latest version of the app installed.

Stay tuned as we work to add more languages so you can have a conversation with Google in more and more places around the world.

Posted by Kartik Murthy, Product Manager, Google Search

A task as simple as choosing a movie to see can actually be complex — and the information you want can be in several different places, often in apps. You might get your trivia from IMDb, the box office stats from Wikipedia and ratings from Rotten Tomatoes. Starting today, Google can save you the digging for information in the dozens of apps you use every day, and get you right where you need to go in those apps with a single search. Google Search can make your life a little easier by fetching the answer you need for you — whether it’s on the web, or buried in an app.

Getting you there faster



Helping you find just the right app
Sometimes, the best answer for a search can be an app. Say you want to explore downhill skiing — now, you can just ask Google for downhill skiing apps and get a collection of useful apps.






Posted by Scott Huffman, VP of Engineering

You may have noticed it's easy to get tripped up measuring the wrong thing using Google Trends. When you look up "rice," are you measuring search interest in Rice University or the rice you eat? When you look up "Gwyneth Paltrow" how can you be sure you're counting all the common misspellings? Starting today, you'll find new topic reports to help you more easily measure search interest in the people, places and things you care about.

In the past, if you wanted to compare search interest in Rice and Harvard, you might get a report something like this:


Now when you start typing into the search box you'll see new topic predictions. Type "rice" and you'll see predictions for "Rice University (University)" and "Rice (Cereal)." This makes it easy to do a fairer comparison.


In addition to helping with ambiguous search terms like "rice," the new feature also automates counting many different searches that probably mean the same thing. So, when you measure interest in "Gwyneth Paltrow (Actress)" our algorithms count many other searches that mean the same thing "Gweneth Paltrow," "Gwen Paltro," etc. As our systems improve, we may even count searches like "Lead actress in Iron Man." This can be particularly useful for topics that are commonly searched with misspellings and in different languages.

Topic reports are a beta feature and we want to get your feedback. To start, you'll find data for more than 700,000 unique topics from Barack Obama to football (soccer) to Hayao Miyazaki, and you can slice the data to measure search interest worldwide or in any of the following seven countries: Brazil, France, Germany, India, Italy, UK, and US. We'll continue to improve the accuracy and comprehensiveness of the data, and as we do we'll add topics and expand to support new regions.

Posted by Gil Ran, Software Engineer

Cross-posted from the Google Translate Blog

Have you ever been in that frustrating situation where you meet someone -- yet can’t communicate because you don’t speak each other’s language? Well, hopefully communication can become a whole lot easier with the launch of the new Google Translate app for Android. The app now features faster and simpler speech translation, additional language support, and a sleek new look.

Converse without boundaries
Let’s say you're taking your first vacation abroad and decide to head to Spain. The only problem? You don't speak Spanish. Now -- equipped with just your Android device -- you can have a fully translated back-and-forth conversation from Spanish to English with very little work. All you need to do is open up your Translate app and press the microphone icon. We’ve also added gesture support, so with a simple turn of the screen, you can switch back and forth between languages. This makes ordering food in that authentic Tapas restaurant a whole lot easier!

More translate options for more languages
With today’s updated Translate app, we also offer more language support for our handwriting feature, allowing you to directly write words in Hebrew, Javanese, and Esperanto on your device screen and have them translated on the fly. You can also use our camera translation feature to take a photo of written text with your Android device and highlight which words you’d like to be translated, now including additional language support for Malay and Ukranian.

We hope Google Translate can continue to help break down more language barriers in easier ways, all on your mobile device. We'll be rolling the update out via the Google Play Store today and tomorrow. We hope you give it a whirl!
Posted by Matthew Gaba, Product Manager

When I'm planning a trip, I use Google Flight Search to find the option that's best for me. For those times when I'm not ready to book immediately, Flight Search now offers a "Saved Flights" feature that allows me to save useful flight information and retrieve it when I'm ready to book.

When I’m signed in to my Google account on my mobile phone or tablet, and find a flight option I'm interested in I click the star button to add it to my saved flights list.


I can then access my saved flights on any device at any time by clicking the star icon on the Flight Search home page.


Saved results reflect price changes that may have occurred since I added the flights to my list, giving me all the information I need to make a smart booking decision.

We hope this helps make your trip planning a little easier to manage.

Posted by Jirka Semecky, Software Engineer

• When there’s important stuff that you need to know right now, Google will now automatically send you a notification. For example, while I was busy getting my son ready this morning, a notification appeared on my lock screen telling me that I should leave for his dentist appointment right away because of a traffic jam. 

Google Search is turning 15. Remember what it was like to search in 1998? You’d sit down and boot up your bulky computer, dial up on your squawky modem, type in some keywords, and get 10 blue links to websites that had those words. It seemed like magic (and it was way way faster than card catalogs and microfiche!).

The world has changed so much since then: billions of people have come online, the web has grown exponentially, and now you can ask any question on the powerful little device in your pocket. You can explore the world with the Knowledge Graph, ask questions aloud with voice search, and get info before you even need to ask with Google Now.


But 15 years on, we’re just getting started. We want to help you make more of each day. Here are a few of the latest features you can try out:

Comparisons and filters in the Knowledge Graph

We keep expanding features of the Knowledge Graph so it can answer more questions—even those that don’t have a simple answer. Let’s say you want to get your daughter excited about a visit to the Met. You can pull up your phone and say to Google: “Tell me about Impressionist artists.” You’ll see who the artists are, and you can dive in to learn more about each of them and explore their most famous works. If you want to switch to Abstract artists, you can do that really easily with our new filter tool:


Or let’s say you want to compare two things: How much saturated fat is in butter versus olive oil? Now you can simply tell Google: “Compare butter with olive oil.” Our new comparison tool gives you new insights by letting you compose your own answer:


You can try this for some other things you might be curious about, such as dog breeds (“compare pekingese vs. chihuahua”) or celestial objects (“compare earth vs. neptune”)—and we’ll keep adding more.

Get things done with Google across your devices

Having a “conversation” with Google should also be more natural. Ideally, you wouldn’t need to pull out your phone or tap buttons to use Google. We’re not quite there yet, but you can already do a lot with just your voice. In the next couple of weeks, you’ll be able to download a new version of the Google Search app on iPhone and iPad. With this update, you can get notifications across your devices. So if you tell your Nexus 7, “OK Google. Remind me to buy olive oil at Safeway,” when you walk into the store with your iPhone, you’ll get a reminder. We’ll also show you Google Now notifications so you’re not late to your cooking class.


A simpler, more unified design on mobile devices

You’ll also notice a new look and feel for Google Search and ads on your phones and tablets. It’s cleaner and simpler, optimized for touch, with results clustered on cards so you can focus on the answers you’re looking for.


We’ll keep improving Google Search so it does a little bit more of the hard work for you. This means giving you the best possible answers, making it easy to have a conversation and helping out before you even have to ask. Hopefully, we’ll save you a few minutes of hassle each day. So keep asking Google tougher questions—it keeps us on our toes! After all, we’re just getting started.

Posted by Amit Singhal, SVP, Google Search

Cross-posted from the Google Translate Blog.

When you’re trekking around a new place or trying to communicate with someone who speaks a different language, Google Translate helps break down the language barrier. Today we updated and optimized the Google Translate app for iOS 7, where you’ll see a fresh new look, handwriting support, and 70+ languages.

If you’re on vacation in Kyoto, and want to learn more about an exotic flower arrangement, use text-input to type in your question and translate from English to Japanese with ease. You can also hear your translation spoken back to you in Japanese.


If a shopkeeper in Paris wants to talk with a visitor from Spain, they can tap the microphone, speak naturally, and quickly translate from French to Spanish with a few simple taps.


If you are an expat living in China and want to know what’s on the menu, use the Handwrite feature to discover a tasty new treat. Tap the Handwrite icon, and input natural handwriting in nearly 50 languages.


Google Translate is useful in many situations, especially while you’re on the go. We hope you enjoy the new design and features.

Posted by Masakazu Seno, Software Engineer, Google Translate

If you're anything like me, you move among devices and Google products on a regular basis. You might check Gmail on your phone, for instance, then organize your Calendar via laptop, then browse Google+ photos from your tablet.

Regardless of your routine, getting around Google should be seamless, and once you're inside an app, you don't want any distractions. So we're introducing an updated Google bar that streamlines your experience across products and devices:


Your Google products are now accessible under a new app launcher, located at the top right of the screen. Just click on the familiar 'Apps' grid, also present on Android devices and Chromebooks:


As part of this design, we’ve also refined the color palette and letter shapes of the Google logo. We'll be rolling out this update across most Google products over the next few weeks, so keep an eye out and let us know your thoughts.

Posted by Eddie Kessler, Tech Lead / Manager

Cross-posted with the US Public Policy Blog, the European Public Policy Blog, and the Google Research Blog.

Last year, we launched two improvements to Google Patents: the Prior Art Finder and European Patent Office (EPO) patents. Today we’re happy to announce the addition of documents from four new patent agencies: China, Germany, Canada, and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). Many of these documents may provide prior art for future patent applications, and we hope their increased discoverability will improve the quality of patents in the U.S. and worldwide.

So if you want to learn about a Chinese dual-drive bicycle, a German valve for inflating bicycle tires, attach a Canadian trailer to your bike, or read the WIPO application for pedalling with one leg, those and millions of other inventions are now available on Google Patents.

Thanks to Google Translate, all patents are available in both their original languages and in English, and you can search across the world’s patents using terms in any of those languages. When there are multiple submission languages, you can move between them with a single click on the tabs at the top of the page, as shown in the screenshot below:

Posted by Jon Orwant, Engineering Manager

Whether you're looking for trending celebrities, a monthly recap of what's hot, or power tools to make your own discoveries about what's piquing the world's curiosity - today you'll find new features in Google Trends to make it easier to explore hot topics in Google Search.

Trending Top Charts.
In May we added a new feature to Google Trends called "Top Charts," where you can explore real-world people, places and things ranked by overall search interest in the United States (with more countries coming soon). These "Most Searched" lists span dozens of areas from athletes to cities to cocktails. We've heard great feedback from people who want "Trending" lists -- not just what's most searched overall, but what's spiking compared with usual search volumes. Starting today, you can explore these new Trending Top Charts for a number lists across entertainment, sports, politics and more.

For example, while it may come as no surprise that the United States is the most searched country among people in the U.S., it's more interesting that Syria and Russia were the two top trending countries last month. To see the new "Trending" charts, click the arrow icon at the top of any supported Top Chart.


Past 30 Days view of Hot Searches.
Top Charts is a great way to see a monthly recap of the hottest people, places and things in a given category (politicians, cities, cars, etc), but what if you want to see a recap of what was hot overall? Now you'll find a new view of hot topics from the past thirty days. Click the new calendar icon at the top of the Hot Searches page for any of our thirteen supported countries. Hover on a topic for some quick information and a link to see more search trends from the day.


Updates to the Explore page.
For power users, the best part of Google Trends is the ability to look up search data for any topic, and slice and compare the data by region, time series, category, and more. Today we're rolling out some updates to make this a better experience. We've shifted refinements for countries, categories, and Google products (like Web Search, YouTube, etc) to the top navigation, making it a more consistent Google experience. We've also made it easier to discover power tools to compare countries and time ranges.

Posted by Itai Bar-Sinai, Software Engineer

If you use Google all the time and have ideas about how we could provide a better Search experience for our users, we want your help. Send us your best Search policy suggestions by filling out this form. Your ideas could have a direct impact on Google.

As part of the recently-launched How Search Works website, we published our Search policy principles and a list of detailed Search content policies for the first time. Our goal was to show users how we think about controversial content in Search while still promoting fast access to the world's information.

But we’re always looking to do better, and we’re curious to know what our users think. That’s why we’d love to see your ideas for improving our Search policies and processes. Should we alert users if we suspect that there's not much information on the web about their query? How should Google surface information that might affect a website's ranking? How should we deal with businesses that we believe may be hacked? Should we do something completely different to support our users? Anything related to how we serve content in search results or interact with users is fair game.

Now’s your chance to make an impact and have fun doing it, so put on your thinking hats. You can submit entries using this form. We’ll review all of the submissions and contact some of the best contributors to discuss their ideas.

Happy searching!

P.S. If you need some ideas to get you started, check out this presentation from SMX West about Google’s search policies called "Walk a Mile in Google's Shoes: Dealing with Tough Calls in Search."

Patrick Thomas, Search Policy Specialist

To understand a broad topic, sometimes you need more than a quick answer. Our research indicates perhaps 10% of people’s daily information needs fit this category -- topics like stem cell research, happiness, and love, to name just a few. That's why over the next few days we’ll be rolling out a new feature to help you find relevant in-depth articles in the main Google Search results.

Now sometimes when you're searching for a broad topic (on google.com in English to start), you'll find a new block of results like the following:


If you care about censorship, you'll find a thought-provoking article by Salman Rushdie in The New Yorker, a piece by our very own Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen in the Guardian, and another great article about Iran. If you're in the mood for something lighter, search for [lego], you'll find great in-depth articles about many different facets of the topic from gender to engineering to art. For some more examples, check out new search results for population growth, capital punishment and e-waste.

I'm happy to see people continue to invest in thoughtful in-depth content that will remain relevant for months or even years after publication. This is exactly what you'll find in the new feature. In addition to well-known publishers, you'll also find some great articles from lesser-known publications and blogs. If you're a publisher or webmaster, check out our help center article and post on the Webmaster Central blog to learn more.

Posted by Pandu Nayak, Member of Technical Staff

We want you to have the world’s financial data at your fingertips. We’ve launched five new exchanges on Google Finance -- try these examples to see them in action:

BM&F Bovespa (Brazil): AmBev, Petrobras, Índice Bovespa
Borsa Istanbul (Turkey): Turkcell, İş Bankası
The Stock Exchange of Thailand: PTT, Siam Bank
SIX Swiss Exchange: Nestlé, Novartis, Swiss Market Index
Wiener Borse (Austria): OMV, Voestalpine

As always, you can see the full list of stock exchanges we make available.

Posted by Greg Pennington, Product Manager, Google Finance

Figuring out how to make smart choices about some of our favorite foods can often be a cumbersome and daunting process. So we’re hoping we can make those choices a little bit easier: starting today you will be able to quickly and easily find extensive nutrition information for over 1,000 fruits, vegetables, meats and meals in search. From the basics of potatoes and carrots to more complex dishes like burritos and chow mein, you can simply ask, “How much protein is in a banana?” or “How many calories are in an avocado?” and get your answer right away. You'll hear the answer to your specific question, see relevant nutrition information under an expansion, and be able to switch to other related foods or serving sizes.





This new nutritional information builds on our work on the Knowledge Graph, which brings together all kinds of information from across the web that wasn't easily accessible. The graph helps us connect things that are related, even in cases when those foods have a completely different sounding name from what you asked. For example, when you ask for “summer squash carbs”, we include “zucchini” as a relevant food in the dropdown, because it is a type of summer squash.

Here are a few examples:

• Tempted by some popcorn at the movies? Ask “how many calories are in popcorn” and you’ll get your answer. [Hint: it's 31 calories per cup]
  
• Perplexed by a food label or recipe? Ask “what nutrients are in breadfruit?” or “is there sugar in granadilla?”
  
• Big on a high protein diet? Ask “how many carbs in corn?” or simply search for [corn] and you’ll see detailed nutrition info.
  

This feature will begin to launch today in English and will be rolling out in the US over the next ten days. Over time we’ll be adding more features, foods, and languages. So tap the microphone, give the feature a spin, and soon explore and discover the ins and outs of over 1,000 of your favorite foods.

Posted by Ilya Mezheritsky, Product Manager

When Google understands a website’s content in a structured way, we can present that content more accurately and more attractively in search. For example, our algorithms can enhance search results with “rich snippets” when we understand that a page contains an event, recipe, product, review, or similar. We can also feature a page’s data as part of answers in search from the Knowledge Graph or in Google Now cards, helping you find the right information at just the right time.


Starting today, webmasters have two new tools that make it simpler than ever before to provide the structured content of their web pages. The first is an expansion of Data Highlighter to eight types of structured data: events, products, local businesses, articles, software applications, movies, restaurants, and TV episodes. With Data Highlighter, webmasters don’t even need to change their site’s HTML. Instead, they can just point and click with their mouse to “tag” the key fields on a few sample pages of their site. Google learns the pattern of the fields and applies it to similar pages on the site, so all their information can be understood.


The second tool, Structured Data Markup Helper, is for web authors who are ready to take the next step and embed structured data directly within their pages, so their content is available to everyone. As with Data Highlighter, one simply points and clicks on a sample web page to indicate its key data fields. Structured Data Markup Helper then shows exactly what microdata annotations to add to the page’s HTML code. We hope this helps give HTML authors a running start with adding structured data to their sites, in turn making search results more meaningful.

To learn more, please see our post on the Webmaster Central blog!

Posted by Justin Boyan, Product Manager

Your photos represent some of your most important memories and life events, yet they are increasingly difficult to manage as you build up your photo library, accumulate new devices and make new friends. In many cases, searching for your photos can be challenging because the information you’re looking for is visual.

Starting today, you’ll be able to find your photos more easily and connect with the friends, places and events in your Google+ photos. For example, now you can search for your friend’s wedding photos or pictures from a concert you attended recently. To make computers do the hard work for you, we’ve also begun using computer vision and machine learning to help recognize more general concepts in your photos such as sunsets, food and flowers.


Try it out on Google.com by signing in and searching for [my photos] or [my photos from new york last year] or [matt’s photos of food]. You can also try out this feature on Google+ Photos.

Update (4:45 p.m. PST): To clarify, searching for [my photos] and similar terms is currently available in English on Google.com when you are signed in to your Google+ enabled Google Account.

Posted by Matthew Kulick, Product Manager

Search has always been about giving you the best answers quickly, regardless of what device you use. At Google I/O today, we gave an update on where we are in building the search engine of the future--a search engine that can answer your questions, have a conversation with you, and even give you useful things without you ever having to ask.

A conversation with search -- across your devices

People communicate with each other by conversation, not by typing keywords -- and we’ve been hard at work to make Google understand and answer your questions more like people do. Already, you can tap a mic, talk to Google in a more natural way and get responses spoken back to you on Android, iPhone, and iPad devices.

Today, we previewed what this conversational experience will look like in Chrome on your desktops and laptops. Soon, you’ll be able to just say, hands-free, “OK Google, will it be sunny in Santa Cruz this weekend?” and get a spoken answer. Then, you’ll be able to continue the conversation and just follow up with “how far is it from here?” if you care about the drive or “how about Monterey?” if you want to check weather somewhere else, and get Google to tell you the answer.


Better answers - Improvements to the Knowledge Graph

We announced the Knowledge Graph -- our map of real-world people, places and things -- less than a year ago and since then have been adding more depth. We’ve also expanded it to make search more intelligent in other languages. And starting today, you’ll get richer answers from the Knowledge Graph if you speak Polish, Turkish, and Traditional and Simplified Chinese.

You’ll also get smarter answers to questions like “what’s the population of Canada?” Not only will Google answer that question, but you also get an answer to the next few follow-up questions people often ask. In a single card, you’ll see how Canada’s population changed over time -- and a comparison with California and Australia.


Google Now: a new take on reminders, and new cards

With just the tap of a mic or flick of a finger, millions of people across the world can easily tap into the entire world’s knowledge and find what they need to make their lives better, or just have their day run a little smoother. That’s why we’re so excited about the new search experience we’re building at Google and it will change how we experience life.

Posted by Amit Singhal, Senior Vice President

• Bosnian is an official language in Bosnia and Herzegovina that’s also spoken in regions of neighboring countries and by diaspora communities around the world.
• Cebuano is one of the languages spoken in the Philippines, predominantly in the middle (Visayas) and southern (Mindanao) regions of the nation.
• You can hear the Hmong language spoken in many countries across the world, including China, Vietnam, Laos, Thailand and throughout the United States.
• Javanese is the second most-spoken language in Indonesia (behind Indonesian), with 83 million native speakers.
• Marathi is spoken in India and has 73 million native speakers. Google Translate already supports several other Indian languages: Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu.
  
  
  

Cross-posted from The Google+ Developers Blog

When users search for your app, they often want to go deeper and see what in-app content fellow users find interesting. Today we're making this possible by bringing app activity to Google search results.





Soon, if you search for a site or app on Google.com (and that app has integrated with Google+ Sign-In app activities), you'll see popular and aggregate user activity to the right of search results. Searching for Fandango, for example, will show the top movies among Google users. And when you click on a movie, you’ll go directly to its page on Fandango.


We're rolling out this feature in desktop Search over the next few weeks, starting with a limited number of music and movie apps — including Deezer, Fandango, Flixster, Slacker Radio, Songza, SoundCloud and TuneIn — but we'll be adding more apps over time.


We've got lots more improvements planned, so stay tuned for more updates.


Posted by Seth Sternberg, Director of Product Management, Google+