Inside Search
The official Google Search blog
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
Now playing: Faster movie search on Android and iPhone
December 9, 2011
(Cross-posted on the
Google Mobile blog
)
With the December movie season in full swing, we’ve just made it even faster and easier to discover movies, showtimes and theaters, all from your smartphone. Now when you search for [movies] or your favorite theater like [century san francisco] on Google.com on your phone, you’ll see interactive results for movies in a new swipeable ribbon, with the most relevant information displayed at the top of the page.
For each movie, you’ll see the movie poster, a short summary, ratings and the nearest theaters and showtimes. Designed to help you quickly browse what’s playing in theaters now, this information instantly updates as you slide through the movie posters -- no need to wait for a page to load or to use the back button.
To learn more about a movie, tap the movie title to find details like the cast and a full summary. And if you see a play button on the movie poster, you can tap to view the official trailer. You can even buy tickets directly from your smartphone by tapping on underlined showtimes -- and skip past those long holiday box office lines!
So the next time you head out to see sagas of vampires, the world’s biggest Muppets fan, dancing penguins or nearly impossible heists, try the new interactive results for movies by visiting Google.com on your iOS or Android phone’s browser and searching for [movies], [theaters] or a movie title. This feature is available in English, in the US.
Posted by Toshi Tajima, Software Engineer
Exploring ancient ruins in 3D with Google Earth
December 8, 2011
(Cross-posted from the
LatLong Blog
)
Searches can become stories. Some inspire us, others change the way we see the world or just make us smile. This is the latest in a
series of videos
about people who have used Google to discover or do something extraordinary.
The field of archaeology has changed much over the years. New modes of transportation have made even the most remote sites accessible, while cameras simplify how a historical record is created and shared with the world.
Spurred on by these innovations, researchers are also embracing technology as a creative way to aid their research and explore ancient sites. To conduct archaeological studies in the Middle East,
Professor David Kennedy
of the University of Western Australia turned to
Google Earth
.
From his office chair in Perth, Professor Kennedy has
remotely identified
thousands of archaeological sites without having to step foot on Saudi Arabian or Yemeni soil. Historically it has been difficult to undertake ground surveys and aerial photographs of these areas are seldom available for research, making the countries some of the least explored archaeologically. By carefully studying satellite imagery of the Arabian peninsula in Google Earth, Professor Kennedy has
unearthed an enormous record
of archaeological sites, from ancient
geoglyphs
to stone
Wheels
to Pendant-shaped tombs and animal traps called kites that could be up to 9,000 years old.
Watch
Professor Kennedy’s Search Story video
to see how Google Earth aided his search for these ancient sites across the Middle East.
Professor Kennedy
isn’t the only archaeologist to discover the potential in using satellite imagery to aid traditional field methods. Visit
www.OneWorldManyStories.com
to discover how the scientific community has used Google Earth to
uncover ancient relics
, find a
new hominid ancestor
,
identify hidden forests
, and
put craters on the map
.
Do you have a great Google Earth story?
Share it
with us.
Posted by Vicky Homan, Google Earth Product Marketing
Tablet image results in new carousel view
December 8, 2011
(Cross-posted on the
Google Mobile blog
)
In July, we started to
evolve the Google design and experience
on Android and iOS tablets by updating features like larger touch targets and enhanced image viewing to make searching faster and easier. Today, we’re building on that foundation by adding a new image carousel for viewing large image results within a few swipes.
As someone who enjoys being outdoors, I like exploring beautiful images of nature. With the new image carousel, I can discover photos of bright sea anemones or colorful lorikeet birds on my tablet in a more interactive and immersive way. Now when I tap on an image result, it’ll expand in the carousel view and I can swipe through the search results. To learn more about an image, a tap on the web page preview, title, description or URL will take me directly to the webpage. See how you can take the image carousel for a spin:
Try out the new image carousel by going to Google on your iOS or Android tablet’s browser and searching for your favorite images. This feature is currently available in over 40 languages.
I hope you enjoy searching for beautiful images in this new view.
Posted by
Nathan Beach
, Product Manager
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
See flight results right on Google.com
December 1, 2011
(Cross-posted on the
ITA by Google blog
)
Back in September, we gave
an early look at our Flight Search feature
, which was developed to help people find faster, more flexible, and more useful results for online travel searches.
Flight Search results have been available by clicking on “Flights” on the left-hand navigation bar on the search results page, or by going directly to
google.com/flights
. But we’ve heard from you that you’d like to see more options to find flights and prices even more easily and quickly.
Starting today, we’ll begin showing flight information right in your Google search results on certain flight related searches. For example, if you search for [flights from San Francisco to Las Vegas] you’ll see a table that shows available flights, including duration and prices. You can adjust dates on the page, or click any flight to further research and book your trip.
Over the next couple days, you’ll start to see the flight results appear for searches whose origins and destinations are currently supported by our Flight Search feature. In the short term, those results are limited to domestic US flights. The
flight schedule feature
will continue to provide information about nonstop routes around the world and across 11 languages.
Once you've booked your flight and are on your way, if you're traveling through one of the many U.S. airports whose floor plans we
recently added
to Google Maps for Android, you can easily see where you are and what's around you from the convenience of your mobile device. Happy travels!
Posted by Emmet Connolly, UX Designer, Flight Search feature
Search quality highlights: new monthly series on algorithm changes
December 1, 2011
Update
16 May, 2012, 7:00pm: We made a minor update to the description of the "parked domain" classifier to ensure we aren't implying ads can't be useful.
Today we’re publishing another list of search improvements, beginning a monthly series where we’ll be sharing even more details about the algorithm and feature enhancements we make on a near-daily basis. We piloted a
post like this
earlier in November, and we were glad to hear you liked it.
We know people care about how search works, so we always want to push the envelope when it comes to transparency. We added it up, and to date we’ve published almost 1,000 blog posts about search, more than 400 webmaster videos and thousands of forum posts. For years now we’ve been blogging about significant algorithmic updates like
Panda
and our recent
freshness update
. So, why do we need yet another blog series?
We’ve been wracking our brains trying to think about how to make search even more transparent. The good news is that we make roughly 500 improvements in a given year, so there’s always more to share. With this blog series, we’ll be highlighting many of the subtler algorithmic and visible feature changes we make. These are changes that aren’t necessarily big enough to warrant entire blog posts on their own.
Here’s a list since our post on November 14th:
Related query results refinements:
Sometimes we fetch results for queries that are similar to the actual search you type. This change makes it less likely that these results will rank highly if the original query had a rare word that was dropped in the alternate query. For example, if you are searching for [rare red widgets], you might not be as interested in a page that only mentions “red widgets.”
More comprehensive indexing:
This change makes more long-tail documents available in our index, so they are more likely to rank for relevant queries.
New “parked domain” classifier:
This is a new algorithm for automatically detecting parked domains. Parked domains are placeholder sites with little unique content for our users and are often filled only with ads. In most cases, we prefer not to show them.
More autocomplete predictions:
With autocomplete, we try to strike a balance between coming up with flexible predictions and remaining true to your intentions. This change makes our prediction algorithm a little more flexible for certain queries, without losing your original intention.
Fresher and more complete blog search results:
We made a change to our blog search index to get coverage that is both fresher and more comprehensive.
Original content:
We added new signals to help us make better predictions about which of two similar web pages is the original one.
Live results for Major League Soccer and the Canadian Football League:
This change displays the latest scores & schedules from these leagues along with quick access to game recaps and box scores.
Image result freshness:
We made a change to how we determine image freshness for news queries. This will help us find the freshest images more often.
Layout on tablets:
We made some minor color and layout changes to improve usability on tablet devices.
Top result selection code rewrite:
This code handles extra processing on the top set of results. For example, it ensures that we don’t show too many results from one site (“host crowding”). We rewrote the code to make it easier to understand, simpler to maintain and more flexible for future extensions.
And here’s a recap of improvements we’ve already blogged about since last time:
New verbatim tool
Updated Search App for iPad
New Google bar
We’ll report back in early January with our next batch and plan to continue monthly after that.
Subscribe to the blog
and soon you’ll be real search geeks like us!
Posted by Scott Huffman, Engineering Director
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