Inside Search
The official Google Search blog
See upcoming concerts in search results
February 23, 2012
I’m a big music fan, so I spend a lot of time searching for music bands and artists. When I hear a new song or a friend tells me about an artist I should check out, I search to watch their music videos, find out recent news about them, and to learn more about them in general. I can also see right on the results page which sites
have songs or samples of songs that I can listen to
.
But to me, music is best heard live, so it’s always exciting to find out that a band I love is coming to town. For fellow concert-goers, now when you search for bands or artists, you may see upcoming concert tour dates right on the results page if they’re playing in your area. If they aren’t touring near you, the new results for concerts won’t appear, but if the band happens to be coming to your town within the next few months, you can see the concert dates listed under the band’s official website. You can then click on the band’s official site to learn more or click on other web pages to learn more about the event or to buy tickets.
For example, I was searching for the [black keys] to listen to some of their music online. I wasn’t explicitly looking for their tour schedule, but now I know I should keep my calendar clear on Friday May 4, since they will be coming back to the Bay Area, and I remember how great they were at
Outside Lands
last year:
To find upcoming concert tour dates, we aggregate relevant data for events from multiple websites and show it under the band’s official website with links to the event sites where you can find out more about the event or purchase tickets.
If you have a website listing upcoming events and would like them to appear in search, you should add
rich snippets markup
to your web pages. After following the instructions to
mark up your events
, use the rich snippets testing tool to test your markup and see how it would appear on Google.
This is currently available to those searching on
google.com
in English, and we’ll continue to expand the feature to more countries in the future.
Posted by Kavi Goel, Product Manager, Search
Helping you find what's in the mind's eye with improved related searches
February 23, 2012
(Cross-posted on the
Official Google Blog
)
Today we’re making it easier for you to hone in on that perfect image or explore your topic visually with an update to related search links. Related search links have been around for awhile—they’re the row of blue links running across the top of your image search results—but today we’re making them more visual to help you find exactly what you’re looking for or just have fun exploring.
For example, when planning a trip to Greece, I may not know what places are worth a visit, so I search for [
greece
] on Image Search. Now, with more visual search links, I can hover over the links on the top of the results, like [santorini greece], and see a panel pop up with images of Santorini. Without having to type more words into the search box or clicking through, I can quickly glance at the pictures of Santorini. If I decide to click through, I find
new links
for further refined or related searches, such as [oia santorini greece] or [santorini greece sunset]. Now I’m sold, I want to see more Santorini images.
You’ll start to see these links whenever you search for images as we roll this change out globally over the next few weeks.
Posted by Peter Linsley, Product Manager
Find hotels by travel time
January 20, 2012
Have you ever wanted to visit somewhere while on vacation and realized that getting there from your hotel would be a real trek? Wouldn’t it be great if you could specify how close you wanted to be to that place when searching for a hotel?
Last year we introduced
Hotel Finder
, an experimental tool to help you find hotels, and today, we’ve extended its functionality with a new way to search: ‘Hotels by Travel Time’. Now if you go to Hotel Finder and enter [
Empire State Building
] in the search box, you’ll see the hotels that you can get to by public transport within 20 minutes.
The areas you can easily reach from your point of interest are spotlighted on the map. If 20 minutes is too long to travel or you like to get around on foot, you can easily change the travel time or your mode of transport (e.g., walking, transit). The map will update automatically to show a new spotlighted area and the nearby hotels. You can also drag the red pin to find hotels near other places you might like to visit.
This feature is not only for tourists. You might be travelling on business and want to make sure you can get to the office or that conference center. Check out this example of hotels near [
Canary Wharf, London
].
As well as searching by travel time, you can define your own area to search within (choose “Hotels in selected area”) or find hotels in a city’s most popular locations:
To try it out, simply go to
Hotel Finder
, search for a city or a point of interest and select “Hotels by travel time”. Keep in mind that Hotel Finder and 'Hotels by travel time' are experimental and filtering by transit time is only available in
cities
where we have partnered with local transit agencies to integrate their data into Google Maps. We’d love to hear what you think: just click the “Send Feedback” link in the right-hand corner of Hotel Finder.
Posted by Konrad Gianno, Software Engineer
Santa Search it!
December 19, 2011
Sometimes music makes learning easier. With this in mind, a few of us Googlers decided to make a search tip rap music video to help you, and Saint Nick, navigate the holidays.
Hopefully, these
tricks
will help make your holiday season easier. And if you found our video as helpful as Santa did, feel free to share it with a loved one. Remember, re-gifting is okay when sharing search tips.
Happy Holidays!
Posted by
Matt Kane
, Content and User Education Specialist
Making Public Data More Accessible on the Web
December 12, 2011
Last year, we launched the
Google Public Data Explorer
, an online tool that organizes public statistics and brings them to life with interactive exploration and visualizations. Since then, we’ve added dozens of new datasets and received enthusiastic feedback from users around the world. Several data providers, such as the
UN Development Programme
and
Statistics Catalunya
, have even integrated the tool into their web sites.
Today, we’re pleased to announce the next step in our public data effort- a completely revamped product featuring an updated look and feel, improved interaction modes, and a new visualization engine.
Now you can:
1. Search across the data
Our most popular datasets have
been accessible through Google Web Search
for some time, and this will continue to be the case. Now, however, you can also search within the product, across our extensive corpus of public statistics. This allows you to find data on issues such as
global competitiveness
,
population density
, or
infant deaths
. The search page also features a set of sample visualizations and stories, which highlight some of the topics covered by the product.
2. Slice and dice with fewer clicks
Once you’ve selected a dataset, the new exploration UI puts the data front and center. Want to plot “Fertility Rate” instead of “GDP”? Just make a single click in the list to the left of the chart. Interested in the unemployment rate for women as opposed to men? Just as easy. No more digging through pop-ups or settings menus.
3. Access it on any device
Our new charts are built according to open web standards such as HTML5. As a result, they work across all common desktop, tablet, and smartphone configurations, without depending on third-party plugins. We expect the performance and functionality of the charts to improve over time as browser support for HTML5 matures.
Give the new
Google Public Data
a try, and let us know what you think by posting in our
discussion forum
.
Posted by Benjamin Yolken, Product Manager, Google Public Data Team
Showing some love to math lovers
December 5, 2011
I still recall the day when my friend Yossi came to school and showed off his brand new graphing calculator. I was stunned by how easy it was to plot complicated functions -- meanwhile, the rest of us were still drawing them by hand on graph paper.
Today, I’m hoping to share that magical feeling with students around the world, with the introduction of graphing functionality on Google. Now you can plot mathematical functions right on the search result page. Just type in a
function
and you’ll see an interactive graph on the top of the search results page.
You can zoom in and out and pan across the plane to explore the function in more detail. You can also draw
multiple functions
by separating them with commas. This feature covers an extensive range of single variable functions including trigonometric, exponential, logarithmic and their compositions, and is available in modern browsers.
I hope students and
math lovers
around the world find this experience as magical as I found the graphing calculator so long ago.
Posted by Adi Avidor, Google Engineer and Math Lover
Preparing for food, family and football this Thanksgiving
November 23, 2011
There’s a lot to look forward to at Thanksgiving--pumpkin pie, turkey (or
turducken
for some people), time with the family, football, and giving thanks. But the holiday can also be stressful if you’re the one preparing the big dinner. Even if you’re planning to get away, traveling during the holidays can seem more like a headache than a vacation, especially when
42.5 million Americans are expected to travel this Thanksgiving
.
To help reduce some of the stress so you can spend more time enjoying the occasion, here are some search tips to make your life a little easier.
Tackling the turkey:
Recipe View.
Prepare a Thanksgiving meal for even the pickiest of eaters using
Recipe View
in the left-hand navigation bar, where you can search for recipes based on an ingredient, cooking time and/or calorie count. You can search for a [
stuffing
] recipe without sourdough or a [
mashed potatoes
] recipe that is less than 500 calories and takes less than 30 minutes to prepare. It's also a great way to find new, creative dishes for those leftovers, like [
thanksgiving leftovers shepherd's pie
] instead of the usual [
turkey sandwich
].
Convert units of cooking measurements.
Now you have your recipes, but you may need to triple or even quadruple the serving size because you have a lot of people coming over. To quickly do the math and convert different units of measurement, you can enter your desired conversion into the search box. For example, you can find out [
how many tablespoons are in a cup
] and instead of measuring out 16 tablespoons of sugar, you can just measure out one cup of sugar.
Taking care of your travel needs:
Find flights for your holiday travel using Flight Search.
Whether you’re looking to book a last minute holiday getaway or planning ahead for New Year's, our
Flight Search feature
helps you plan your trip quickly and easily. If your travel dates are flexible, Flight Search can even help you
decide when to fly to get the lowest price
. How does [
Hawaii
] for New Year’s sound?
Track a flight.
While waiting for family or friends to arrive, you can quickly see if their flight is on time just by searching the name of the airline and the flight number, such as [
united 688
] to see that Aunt Mary has landed in Chicago on time.
Enjoying the rest of the day:
Check the score without leaving the table.
If you can't watch the big football match-ups on Thanksgiving day but want to know the score, sneak a peek on your mobile phone by searching for [
green bay packers
] or [
san francisco 49ers
] to quickly see the score.
Entertain the kids.
An important detail to enjoying your well-cooked meal is making sure the kids’ table doesn’t erupt into a food fight. Keep the kids entertained by searching for [
Thanksgiving coloring pages
] on Google Images, printing them out, and leaving them on the table with crayons. Just make sure there are enough crayons for everyone!
Movie night.
For some people, the perfect way to cap off a filling turkey-and-pumpkin-pie meal is to take the entire family to the movies. Whether you’re catching the new [
Twilight Breaking Dawn
] flick or [
The Muppets
] movie, you can easily check theater locations and showtimes near you by typing [
movies
] into the search box.
Hope you have a happy, stress-free, delicious Thanksgiving!
Posted by Dan Russell, Über Tech Lead, Search Quality & User Happiness
Learn more about Flight Search with three quick tips
November 16, 2011
(Cross-posted on the
ITA by Google blog
)
With the holiday season closely approaching, you might be looking to book flights to visit friends and family. With our
Flight Search
feature, you can plan your trip quickly and easily with just a few clicks of the mouse.
In response to interest from you, we’ve shot three short videos to share some of our favorite ways the Flight Search feature can enable you to explore travel options. For example, you may know you want to travel and have a set budget, but you’re not sure where to go. You can also easily see when to fly in order to get the best deal, and you can use a scatterplot to view the entire set of results to more easily compare all flight options at a glance.
Hope these tips help you spend less time worrying about booking your flight and more time preparing for the holidays.
Posted by Marcin Brodziak, Software Engineer, Flight Search
Search using your terms, verbatim
November 15, 2011
Behind the simplicity of Google search is a complex set of algorithms that expands and improves the query you’ve typed to find the best results. Automatic spelling correction ([vynal] to “vinyl”) and substituting synonyms (matching [pictures] to “photos”) are just two examples of the improvements we make.
In most cases, Google’s algorithms make things better for our users - but in some rare cases, we don’t find what you were looking for. In the past, we provided users with the “+” operator to help you search for specific terms. However, we found that users typed the “+” operator in less than half a percent of all searches, and two thirds of the time, it was used incorrectly. A couple of weeks ago we removed the “+” operator, encouraging the use of the double quotes, which are more likely to be used correctly.
Since then, we’ve received a lot of requests for a more deliberate way to tell Google to search using your exact terms. We’ve been listening, and starting today you’ll be able to do just that through verbatim search. With the verbatim tool on, we’ll use the literal words you entered without making normal improvements such as
making automatic
spelling corrections
personalizing
your search by using information such as sites you’ve visited before
including
synonyms
of your search terms (matching “car” when you search [automotive])
finding results that match
similar terms
to those in your query (finding results related to “floral delivery” when you search [flower shops])
searching for words with the same
stem
like “running” when you’ve typed [run]
making some of your terms
optional
, like “circa” in [the scarecrow circa 1963]
You can access the verbatim search tool under “More search tools” on the left-hand side.
In addition to verbatim search, which will be rolling out to all users over the next few days, we’re also applying similar ideas directly to our algorithms, such as tuning the accuracy of when our query broadening search improvements trigger. In the meantime, if you want to search for a very specific term, be that [carosel] or the [etymology of sissors], give the verbatim tool a try.
Posted by Corin Anderson, Principal Engineer, Search
Powering a new job search engine for military veterans
November 7, 2011
(Cross-posted on the
Official Google Blog
and the
Public Policy blog
)
Earlier today, President Obama spoke about the importance of
helping returning military veterans find work
. Thousands of businesses have committed to hiring military veterans and families and as part of this nationwide effort, starting today, job seekers can visit the
National Resource Directory
(NRD) to search more than 500,000 job openings from employers around the country.
We have been working with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to provide a customized job search engine for the NRD, using
Google Custom Search
technology. This custom search engine uses the power and scale of Google search to constantly crawl the web, looking for
JobPosting markup
from
Schema.org
on sites like
simplyhired.com
to identify veteran-committed job openings. An employer can easily add a job posting to NRD simply by adding that markup to their own web page. As pages are updated or removed from the web, they’re automatically updated and removed from the system, keeping the available job postings on NRD fresh and up to date.
If you’re an employer, you can find
more information
on how to participate on
nationalresourcedirectory.gov
. In addition, organizations such as local veterans' groups can help people find jobs by adding a veteran-committed jobs
search box
to their websites.
We’re happy to contribute to this important initiative and hope businesses use this opportunity to connect with veterans seeking employment.
Posted by
Christina Chen
, Product Manager, Search
A new way to get information about real-world places
November 1, 2011
I love eating out with my friends and trying new places, but one of the most difficult questions you can ask me is "Where do you want to eat?" Today, we’re making a few improvements to Google search that will make it a lot easier and faster to answer this question. For example, I mentioned to a friend that I’ll be visiting Boston, and he suggested that I check out a barbecue place called Redbones BBQ in Davis Square. Since I don't know that restaurant, I do a quick search for [redbones bbq] to see if it’s a place I’d like.
When I do, I see the same familiar search results page but I notice that there's now a new panel to the right of the results -- where previously only a map appeared -- with much more information than before. I see two images with
pegman
, the Street View mascot, below the map so I click on the first one. This instantly takes me to an immersive
360-degree interior view
of the restaurant, as if I were virtually teleported to Redbones.
I pan around and see that it's a cool colorful restaurant with a nice, comfy feel. What's more, when I go back to the search results panel and click on the second image, I’m able to look around the outside of the restaurant and get a sense for the neighborhood via the familiar Street View experience. I’m beginning to really like this place! Further down the panel, I see the price range indicating it won’t be too expensive and an “at a glance” summary that tells me Redbones has great beer and pulled pork sandwiches -- and menu links if I want to see more. Thanks to this helpful information right on the search results page, I’ve quickly been able to make my decision: I’m going to Redbones for a pulled pork sandwich.
Even if I’m not looking for a particular place by name, I can learn about places and quickly decide which ones are right for me. If I want to find a bar near Redbones for a few drinks after dinner, I can just search for [bars davis square] and get a familiar list of results. Only now, scanning the list and comparing places is easier than ever, since the
instant preview feature
will show the same detailed information about the various bars when I hover over the “>>” symbol to the right of each result. After just a few seconds perusing the additional local information for different places, I know that Joshua Tree has a great beer selection and that the Orleans has live music but is a bit farther away.
This new type of layout may appear on the search results page for a range of real-world places -- restaurants, hotels, local businesses, landmarks, museums and more. Of course, the local information that appears will vary depending on what’s available online. So the next time you plan your visit to the
New England Aquarium
or
Fenway Park
, you might be able to check out their opening hours, get directions, and find the nearest transit stops, all from a simple Google search.
In the coming weeks, you’ll start seeing the improved local search experience in more than 40 languages. Give it a try and start discovering new local favorites, near and far!
Posted by Jim Müller, Tech Lead
Improving the look of authorship in your search results
October 28, 2011
Yesterday we introduced a simple way for content creators to
set up authorship using just their email address
, which displays their name and picture on the Google search results page alongside content they wrote. In addition, we’ve added a few improvements to the author information you see in the search results, so you can find out more about the authors behind the articles and engage with them directly.
Specifically, you’ll now see:
Circle count
. Although you saw the name of an author next to the result, we kept hearing that you wanted to find more info about them. The most popular request was knowing how many people followed that author on Google+, which is now included.
Add to circles
. You should be able to easily engage with and hear more from authors you like, so we're making that easy by allowing you to add authors to your circles right in search results (this feature is rolling out over the coming weeks).
Comments
. Another way you can engage with authors is to comment directly to them on Google+. Now if an author shares an article on Google+ and they get comments on it, you’ll see a link on the search results page to view the comments in Google+.
These changes are just another step towards helping you identify and discover high quality content on the web. If you’re a content creator interested in learning more about authorship, check out our
Hilfe-Center
.
Posted by Wanda Hung, Software Engineer
Set up authorship using just your email address
October 27, 2011
In June, we began
highlighting content creators in search results
to help searchers identify high quality, authoritative content. Since then, content creators have been able to link to their content with the
authorship markup
to have their photos appear next to their content in search results and help readers find out more about the person behind the story. After all, if someone searches for [
britney spears
], they should be able to quickly and easily find not just information about Britney Spears, but also information by Britney:
The response to highlighting authoritative content has been positive, and starting today we've simplified the setup process for content creators who want to participate.
Since many of you authors have your email addresses published in your content, we can use this information to link your content to your Google+ profile. Starting today you can verify your email address directly in your Google+ profile. Here’s where you add your email address in your Profile:
For example, let’s say you write content on a page hosted at http://www.galaxytimes.com. To participate in the authorship program, put your name on your content and your e-mail address:
Then verify your email address sagark@galaxytimes.com on your Google+ profile.
To get started:
Click here to setup your
Google+ profile
Remember to upload a high quality headshot, and fill out some profile information such as hometown, etc.
Verify your email address
On your Google+ profile, click on the ‘Edit Profile’ button in the upper right corner
Scroll down and click on “Work”
Click the drop-down arrow next to “Phone”
Click on “Email”
Put your cursor in the box next to “Email”, and fill in your email address where it says “New contact info”. Use your email address which has the same domain as the main place you publish your work. For example, “sagark@galaxytimes.com”.
Change the visibility of the section from “Only you” to “Everyone on the web”
Click on “Save”
Click on “Done Editing”
Scroll down and find where you added the e-mail address and then click “Verify”
We hope this makes things a lot simpler for content creators on the web and continues to help people find high quality content in their search results.
Update 4/18/12:
We now have a new, even simpler tool that allows you to verify your email and sign up for authorship at
https://plus.google.com/authorship
.
Posted by Doantam Phan, Software Engineer
Export your sites blocklist from Chrome to your Google Account
October 25, 2011
Earlier this year, we made
algorithmic changes
to help you find more high-quality sites, and we’ve introduced a
Chrome extension
and
a feature in Google Search where you can hide sites you may find unhelpful
from your search results. Based on your feedback, we’ve added an export feature from the Chrome extension to your Google account. By storing your personal blocked sites list with your Google account, Google hides these sites from your search results when you’re signed in. Also, you can manage your list in a central place, regardless of the browser or computer that you’re using or the extensions that you have installed.
To get started, click on the red button with the extension logo in Chrome, then select “Export” from the screen that shows your personal blocklist.
Then, click the “Export to Google” button. The next prompt asks if you’d like to disable the extension, since the list of blocked domains has now been uploaded to Google and will be used for signed-in searches. You can re-enable it later if your change your mind. In the final step, you review the sites that you want blocked and confirm the export to your Google account.
The sites that you export will be hidden from your searches while you are signed into your account. You can unblock or manage the blocked sites at any time in the
Search Settings Blocked Sites
screen. You can also see our
help page
for more details on the blocked sites feature.
Posted by Ray Zhong, Search Quality Engineer
Choosing the result you want just became easier
September 22, 2011
In addition to
some recent changes
to the look and feel of search, today we’re making it even easier to see Instant Previews of your search results. Sometimes you’re searching for a page with a specific type of visual - like a seating chart when you want to buy baseball tickets - but can’t tell from the results page which one will have exactly what you’re looking for. Or you’ve already seen a specific page and would recognize it in an instant if you saw it again. You can now quickly glance at a preview of the page without having to click and see if it’s the page you want.
Instant Previews
have been around since last year, allowing you to click on the magnifying glass to the right of the result to see a visual overview of a page. Now these previews are no longer even a click away: if you move your mouse over a search result, arrows will appear. Hover over them to see a visual preview of that result.
Posted by Jeromy Henry, User Experience Designer
Hide sites from anywhere in the world
September 13, 2011
In March, we
introduced
the option for you to block sites from your search results that you might not find useful. Sometimes you’ll click on a result, find that it’s not what you wanted, and head right back to the search results page. It could be that the result wasn’t quite right for your query, but other times you may be generally dissatisfied with a particular site appearing in your search results. Starting today, you can now block sites on most Google domains.
If you’re searching on google.fr and come back to the results page after viewing Matt’s blog, you’ll see an option to block this site.
You can manage your list of blocked sites from the dashboard, which can be found in your Search Settings. You’ll see when you blocked a site and the reason that you did so, and you can unblock sites if you choose.
The German version of the Blocked Sites dashboard
We’re happy to be helping users all over the world to take control of their search experience and personalize their results in this manner. We’ve also started
incorporating data about sites people have blocked
into our general search ranking algorithms to help users find more high quality sites. In the future, we may experiment with data from non-US users’ blocked sites. As always, we look forward to your
suggestions
on how to continue improving your search experience.
Posted by Johannes Henkel, Search Quality Engineer
An early look at our Flight Search feature
September 13, 2011
Just over five months ago, we welcomed
ITA Software to the Google family
. Since then, our engineering teams have been working closely together to build new travel tools that provide faster, more flexible, and more useful results to online travel searches. We wanted to give you an early look at some of what we’ve been able to accomplish so far.
Starting today, when you search for flight information on Google, for example “flights from Chicago to Denver,” you will see a “Flights” link in the left-hand panel. This link leads to our new Flight Search feature, and is offered in addition to the
flight schedules
which have been available since May. You can also access the Flight Search feature directly at
google.com/flights
.
With this first step in flight search that combines ITA’s expertise with Google’s technology, you will be able to:
Get super-fast results.
Speed is critical to all the things we love on the web, and travel planning should be no exception. Making changes to dates, destinations, and filters should be as fast as we hope you’ve come to expect from Google.
See a simple list of the most relevant flights.
Flight Search shows you an easy-to-scan list to help you get to your destination quickly and inexpensively.
Figure out when to travel.
Quickly see which travel dates are least expensive by dragging the date selector forward or backward, or check out the bar chart to compare lots of dates at once.
Consider your destination options.
Flight Search helps you explore possible destinations, letting you filter them by airline, flight time and price. For example, you can use the map and filters to see where you can go from San Francisco within 3 hours for less than $300.
Flights are chosen primarily based on cost and total travel time, while covering a variety of departure times and airlines. We automatically set the filters to focus on options which are reasonable in both price and duration, and you can always adjust the filters to show even more flights.
The selection of flight results is not influenced by any paid relationships. Airlines control how their flights are marketed, so as with other flight search providers, our booking links point to airline websites only. We're working to create additional opportunities for our other partners in the travel industry to participate as well.
This is just an early look: the takeoff, not the final destination! You may notice that at the moment we include a limited number of U.S. cities and show results for round-trip economy-class flights only. We’re working hard to improve this feature and look forward to sharing more updates.
Don’t worry if you don’t see the Flight Search feature -- we’re rolling it out over the course of the day. To learn more, check out this video:
Posted by Kourosh Gharachorloo, Engineering Director
Tips from Google’s User Happiness Researcher
July 29, 2011
I'm Daniel Russell, and I'm responsible for “user happiness” on Google's Search Quality team. My team conducts user experience research to try and get the inside story on what people do when they search. We're constantly asking: What works and doesn't work for them? What are they looking for? What DO they want?
To understand the full richness and variety of what people do when searching on Google, we spend many hours in the field, observing as people search. We hear it when they're happy, and when they're terribly frustrated. And perhaps most importantly, we also pay attention to the things they don't say -- the inexpressible "gotchas" that get in the way of their search.
One of the ways I do this kind of work is to teach classes on Internet search skills. I’ve found that while everyone can use Google, some seem to be better at it than others. I try to capture those skills and pass them along to classrooms of students, teachers and librarians. I throughly enjoy showing folks how to search more effectively, and learning new tricks and ideas along the way from them!
I’ll be posting here over the next several weeks with tips and techniques that will let you use Google more efficiently and reflect a bit on the way search changes the way we research, study, write and think.
To start, it’s worth knowing that we’ve made a bunch of recent changes in the way you can
search images
, and I’d like to show you a couple examples.
Understanding a name
: In today’s world, you sometimes only “meet” people virtually. If someone has a name that’s not common in your culture, you may not know if they’re male or female. Here’s a trick: just look for the name in Google Images, like [
Nikhil
], and you should get a pretty good idea. Here are a few other name queries you might try: [
Xiaomei
], [
Aislan
], or one that I had to look up, [
Pelin
].
It's simple enough, but if you haven't seen this kind of trick before, it's well worth knowing. And as these examples point out, what the image search results show you is a sampling of the possibilities, not a definitive answer.
Finding a book by its cover color
: If you’re a visual type, you may find it easier to find a book by its color rather than its exact title. Suppose you want to find a book about Rosa Parks. You don't remember the title, just that it had a green cover. Try searching for [
Rosa Parks book
] in Google Images - adding the word "book" to the query will limit the searches to images related just to books.
Then, using the color filter tool in the left-hand panel, you can select the green filter and find only books about Rosa Parks that have a green color. Voila! You've found your green-covered book about Rosa Parks.
You can experiment with any query, even those that don’t obviously seem to have a visual component. Give it a try, and check back later for other tips!
Posted by Dan Russell, Über Tech Lead, Search Quality & User Happiness
Find the perfect hotel with the Hotel Finder experiment
July 28, 2011
Finding the right hotel can make or break your vacation, so with this in mind, we’re introducing
Hotel Finder
, a new experimental search tool specifically designed to help you find that perfect hotel. Google Hotel Finder makes it easy to narrow down the options:
Figure out where to stay
: To help you figure out where the action is, Hotel Finder shines a "tourist spotlight" on the most visited areas of U.S. cities. We select an initial shape for you based on what’s most popular or you can draw a shape around the area where you want to stay, e.g. on the ocean or along Sunset Boulevard.
Get a good deal
: In the “Compared to typical” section, you can see how each hotel’s price compares to its historical average, so you can tell if it’s good value for your stay.
Compare fast
: You no longer need to open a new browser tab for each hotel result, and then go hunting around for pictures. When you select a hotel in Hotel Finder, we show you a collage of images, Google Places reviews, and key information right within the list. You can even use keyboard shortcuts (“J” and “K”) to flip through the results quickly, just like in
Google Reader
and
News
.
Keep a shortlist:
As you flip through the results, add the hotels you like to a shortlist to easily keep track of the ones that interest you.
When you’re ready to book a hotel, you’ll find a selection of booking options from a range of available partners or directly from the hotel.
Since this tool is an early experiment, it’s currently only available for locations in the U.S. If you’re planning a trip in the U.S. anytime soon, be sure to give Hotel Finder a spin -- and let us know what you think through the “Send Feedback” link right at the top. You can try
Hotel Finder
by visiting
www.google.com/hotelfinder/
.
Posted by Andrew McCarthy, Software Engineer
When is National Popcorn Day?
July 25, 2011
It can be difficult keeping track of the dates of national holidays when it’s hard enough to remember special anniversaries and loved ones’ birthdays. Starting today, for certain searches where you’re looking for the date of a particular holiday or celebration, you’ll be able to quickly find out the answer right on your search results page, whether it’s
Labor Day
oder
National Popcorn Day
.
This currently works for certain
future
and
past
national and religious holidays, internationally recognized days such as
World AIDS Day
, and designated days to celebrate fun things like popcorn and
cookies
in the U.S.
Speaking of which, it’s time to start looking for
great cheesecake recipes
, as
National Cheesecake Day
is just around the corner!
Posted by Anis Abboud, Software Engineer Intern
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