Tag Archives: Google Search

With the help of Google Search, one woman finds her way

Robin Máxkii always felt caught between worlds—her reservation in Wisconsin, where she lived until age 11, and the urban sprawl of Houston, where she went to high school. During her late teens and early 20s, she maintained a blog, Native Notes, where she wrote passionately about native issues. One day, she received an anonymous comment that would change her life. It stated that if she wanted to actively change the community she wrote about, she should go to college. The seed was planted—she just needed to figure out how.


Robin turned to Google Search and before she knew it, she found her place at a tribal college. There, she became a campus leader, and took internships that helped her advocate for greater access to tech for her community.


Robin’s journey is the subject of our latest episode of “Search On,” Google’s original documentary series that tells the stories of people on a quest for better answers and the magic that happens when they find them at the intersection of tech and humanity. As we celebrate the 20th anniversary of Google and Google Search, we couldn’t think of a story that better exemplifies the tremendous possibilities that come when people have access to information. Watch Robin’s story above, and read more at g.co/betweenworlds.

Source: Search


Improving Search for the next 20 years

https://storage.googleapis.com/gweb-uniblog-publish-prod/images/BLR_-_Koshys_1_1.max-1000x1000.jpg Ben Gomes VP Search, News and Assistant
Growing up in India, there was one good library in my town that I had access to—run by the British Council.  It was modest by western standards, and I had to take two buses just to get there. But I was lucky, because for every child like me, there were many more who didn’t have access to the same information that I did. Access to information changed my life, bringing me to the U.S. to study computer science and opening up huge possibilities for me that would not have been available without the education I had.
Ben's library
The British Council Library in my hometown.


When Google started 20 years ago, our mission was to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. That seemed like an incredibly ambitious mission at the time—even considering that in 1998 the web consisted of just 25 million pages (roughly the equivalent of books in a small library).
Fast forward to today, and now we index hundreds of billions of pages in our index—more information than all the libraries in the world could hold. We’ve grown to serve people all over the world, offering Search in more than 150 languages and over 190 countries.
Through all of this, we’ve remained grounded in our mission. In fact, providing greater access to information is as core to our work today as it was when we first started. And while almost everything has changed about technology and the information available to us, the core principles of Search have stayed the same.
  • First and foremost, we focus on the user. Whether you’re looking for recipes, studying for an exam, or finding information on where to vote, we’re focused on serving your information needs.
  • We strive to give you the most relevant, highest quality information as quickly as possible. This was true when Google started with the Page Rank algorithm—the foundational technology to Search. And it’s just as true today.
  • We see billions of queries every day, and 15 percent of queries are ones we’ve never seen before. Given this scale, the only way to provide Search effectively is through an algorithmic approach. This helps us not just solve all the queries we’ve seen yesterday, but also all the ones we can’t anticipate for tomorrow.
  • Finally, we rigorously test every change we make. A key part of this testing is the rater guidelines which define our goals in search, and which are publicly available for anyone to see. Every change to Search is evaluated by experimentation and by raters using these guidelines. Last year alone, we ran more than 200,000 experiments that resulted in 2,400+ changes to search. Search will serve you better today than it did yesterday, and even better tomorrow.
As Google marks our 20th anniversary, I wanted to share a first look at the next chapter of Search, and how we’re working to make information more accessible and useful for people everywhere. This next chapter is driven by three fundamental shifts in how we think about Search:
    Underpinning each of these are our advancements in AI, improving our ability to understand language in ways that weren’t possible when Google first started. This is incredibly exciting, because over 20 years ago when I studied neural nets at school, they didn’t actually work very well...at all!
    But we’ve now reached the point where neural networks can help us take a major leap forward from understanding words to understanding concepts. Neural embeddings, an approach developed in the field of neural networks, allow us to transform words to fuzzier representations of the underlying concepts, and then match the concepts in the query with the concepts in the document. We call this technique neural matching. This can enable us to address queries like: “why does my TV look strange?” to surface the most relevant results for that question, even if the exact words aren’t contained in the page. (By the way, it turns out the reason is called the soap opera effect).
    Finding the right information about my TV is helpful in the moment. But AI can have much more profound effects. Whether it’s predicting areas that might be affected in a flood, or helping you identify the best job opportunities for you, AI can dramatically improve our ability to make information more accessible and useful.
    I’ve worked on Search at Google since the early days of its existence. One of the things that keeps me so inspired about Search all these years is our mission and how timeless it is. Providing greater access to information is fundamental to what we do, and there are always more ways we can help people access the information they need. That’s what pushes us forward to continue to make Search better for our users. And that’s why our work here is never done.

    Posted by Ben Gomes, VP, Search, News and Assistant

    Discover new information and inspiration with Search, no query required

    Last year we introduced the Google feed to surface relevant content to you, even when you’re not searching. It’s grown dramatically over the past year: more than 800 million people use the feed each month to stay up to date on their interests. Today—as a part of three fundamental shifts in how we think about Search—we’re launching a major update to this experience, including a new name, a fresh look, and a brand-new set of features.

    A new name and look

    Since launching the feed, we’ve made it our goal to help you uncover fresh and interesting content about things that matter to you. Now, we’re giving the feed a name that reflects this mission: Discover. With this new name comes a fresh design that makes exploring your interests easier than ever.

    Discover

    New topic headers explain why you’re seeing a particular card in Discover, and whenever a topic catches your eye, you can dive deeper to explore more on that topic.

    Discover topic header

    Next to each topic name is a Discover icon, which you’ll also start to see in Search for an ever-growing set of topics. You can tap “Follow” to start seeing more about that topic in your experience.

    Evergreen content

    In addition to this new look, you’ll also see new types of content in Discover. You’ll find more videos and fresh visual content, as well as evergreen content—articles and videos that aren’t new to the web, but are new to you.


    Discover new to you

    For example, when you’re planning your next trip, Discover might show an article with the best places to eat or sights to see. Suddenly, a travel article published three months ago is timely for you. This can also be useful as you’re taking up a new hobby or going deeper on a long-time interest. Using the Topic Layer in the Knowledge Graph, Discover can predict your level of expertise on a topic and help you further develop those interests. If you’re learning to play guitar, for example, you might see beginner content about learning chords. If you’re already a skilled musician, you may see a video on more advanced techniques.


    Discover is unique because it's one step ahead: it helps you come across the things you haven't even started looking for.

    More context and control

    Because Discover is all about you and your interests, there are now even more ways to customize what you see.


    Discover control icon

    Just tap on the control icon to indicate that you want more or less content on that topic. You’ll continue to see content from a range of sources on any given topic, helping you explore new ideas surrounding your interests.


    When it comes to news, we believe it’s important that everyone has access to the same information. Discover uses the same technology as Full Coverage in Google News to bring you a variety of perspectives on the latest news.


    Discover in multiple languages

    With this redesign, Discover will now be even more useful to people who speak multiple languages. You may like to use recipes in Spanish and read sports in English, and you will see content in your language of preference for each interest.


    Multilingual feed

    We’re starting with support for English and Spanish in the U.S. and will expand to more languages and countries soon.


    Coming to google.com on your phone

    The Google homepage has always been a place to ask questions and search for information you’re interested in. Now, it will be even easier to keep up with your interests, because Discover is coming to google.com on all mobile browsers.


    Think of it as your new mobile homepage where you can not only search, but also discover useful, relevant information and inspiration from across the web for the topics you care about most. This will be rolling out over the next few weeks.


    Discover mobile homepage

    We hope you find this refreshed experience helpful as you discover your next hobby and further develop your interests with Search.

    Source: Search


    Improving Search for the next 20 years

    Growing up in India, there was one good library in my town that I had access to—run by the British Council.  It was modest by western standards, and I had to take two buses just to get there. But I was lucky, because for every child like me, there were many more who didn’t have access to the same information that I did. Access to information changed my life, bringing me to the U.S. to study computer science and opening up huge possibilities for me that would not have been available without the education I had.  

    Ben's library

    The British Council Library in my hometown.

    When Google started 20 years ago, our mission was to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. That seemed like an incredibly ambitious mission at the time—even considering that in 1998 the web consisted of just 25 million pages (roughly the equivalent of books in a small library).

    Fast forward to today, and now we index hundreds of billions of pages in our index—more information than all the libraries in the world could hold. We’ve grown to serve people all over the world, offering Search in more than 150 languages and over 190 countries.

    Through all of this, we’ve remained grounded in our mission. In fact, providing greater access to information is as core to our work today as it was when we first started. And while almost everything has changed about technology and the information available to us, the core principles of Search have stayed the same.

    • First and foremost, we focus on the user. Whether you’re looking for recipes, studying for an exam, or finding information on where to vote, we’re focused on serving your information needs.

    • We strive to give you the most relevant, highest quality information as quickly as possible. This was true when Google started with the Page Rank algorithm—the foundational technology to Search. And it’s just as true today.

    • We see billions of queries every day, and 15 percent of queries are ones we’ve never seen before. Given this scale, the only way to provide Search effectively is through an algorithmic approach. This helps us not just solve all the queries we’ve seen yesterday, but also all the ones we can’t anticipate for tomorrow.

    • Finally, we rigorously test every change we make. A key part of this testing is the rater guidelines which define our goals in search, and which are publicly available for anyone to see. Every change to Search is evaluated by experimentation and by raters using these guidelines. Last year alone, we ran more than 200,000 experiments that resulted in 2,400+ changes to search. Search will serve you better today than it did yesterday, and even better tomorrow.


    As Google marks our 20th anniversary, I wanted to share a first look at the next chapter of Search, and how we’re working to make information more accessible and useful for people everywhere. This next chapter is driven by three fundamental shifts in how we think about Search:

    Underpinning each of these are our advancements in AI, improving our ability to understand language in ways that weren’t possible when Google first started. This is incredibly exciting, because over 20 years ago when I studied neural nets at school, they didn’t actually work very well...at all!

    But we’ve now reached the point where neural networks can help us take a major leap forward from understanding words to understanding concepts. Neural embeddings, an approach developed in the field of neural networks, allow us to transform words to fuzzier representations of the underlying concepts, and then match the concepts in the query with the concepts in the document. We call this technique neural matching. This can enable us to address queries like: “why does my TV look strange?” to surface the most relevant results for that question, even if the exact words aren’t contained in the page. (By the way, it turns out the reason is called the soap opera effect).

    Finding the right information about my TV is helpful in the moment. But AI can have much more profound effects. Whether it’s predicting areas that might be affected in a flood, or helping you identify the best job opportunities for you, AI can dramatically improve our ability to make information more accessible and useful.

    I’ve worked on Search at Google since the early days of its existence. One of the things that keeps me so inspired about Search all these years is our mission and how timeless it is. Providing greater access to information is fundamental to what we do, and there are always more ways we can help people access the information they need. That’s what pushes us forward to continue to make Search better for our users. And that’s why our work here is never done.

    Source: Search


    Keeping people safe with AI-enabled flood forecasting

    For 20 years, Google Search has provided people with the information they need, and in times of crisis, access to timely, actionable information is often crucial. Last year we launched SOS Alerts on Search and Maps to make emergency information more accessible. Since then, we’ve activated SOS Alerts in more than 200 crisis situations, in addition to tens of thousands of Google Public Alerts, which have been viewed more than 1.5 billion times.

    Floods are devastating natural disasters worldwide—it’s estimated that every year, 250 million people around the world are affected by floods, also costing billions of dollars in damages. Flood forecasting can help individuals and authorities better prepare to keep people safe, but accurate forecasting isn’t currently available in many areas. And the warning systems that do exist can be imprecise and non-actionable, resulting in far too many people being underprepared and underinformed before a flood happens.

    To help improve awareness of impending floods, we're using AI and significant computational power to create better forecasting models that predict when and where floods will occur, and incorporating that information into Google Public Alerts. A variety of elements—from historical events, to river level readings, to the terrain and elevation of a specific area—feed into our models. From there, we generate maps and run up to hundreds of thousands of simulations in each location. With this information, we’ve created river flood forecasting models that can more accurately predict not only when and where a flood might occur, but the severity of the event as well.

    flood forecast

    These images depict a flood simulation of a river in Hyderabad, India. The left side uses publicly available data while the right side uses Google data and technology. Our models contain higher resolution, accuracy, and up-to-date information.

    We started these flood forecasting efforts in India, where 20 percent of global flood-related fatalities occur. We’re partnering with India’s Central Water Commission to get the data we need to roll out early flood warnings, starting with the Patna region. The first alert went out earlier this month after heavy rains in the region.

    alert

    Flood alert shown to users in the Patna region.

    We’re also looking to expand coverage to more countries, to help more people around the world get access to these early warnings, and help keep them informed and safe.

    Source: Search


    Helping people find Pathways to their next job through Search

    Last year at I/O, we announced a newjob search experience so more people can find jobs that meet their needs. Since then, we’ve continued to improve and expand this experience. We’ve already helped connect over 100 million people in 92 countries to job listings, and we’re working to bring this feature to more countries by the end of the year.

    We’ve also focused on this unique challenge in individual communities. A few weeks ago, we shared our commitment to help our nation’s military service members transition to civilian jobs with job search for veterans, a tool for service members to easily find civilian jobs that use the skills and experience they developed in their military roles.

    But there’s more to be done. Forty percent of U.S. households struggle to afford ordinary expenses with their current income, while 46 percent of U.S. employers say they can't find employees with the skills they need. As industries change, a gap has formed in local communities: The skills in demand are not always the skills people have. And this gap is different in each community.  

    We see an opportunity for Search to help bridge this gap by connecting job seekers with effective, nearby job training programs delivering the skills local employers need. So that’s the challenge we’re working to solve now: to help people find useful information about the skills and training they need for a job, and better connect them with local resources that can help them realize those opportunities. Here’s one story that inspired us along the way:

    Introducing Pathways, an initiative to connect Americans to local training programs

    We want to help create more stories like Aaron’s for people everywhere and believe these opportunities should be more discoverable online. That’s why today we’re announcing a new feature within job search called Pathways—part of our Grow with Googleinitiative to ensure economic opportunity for everyone.

    Here’s our aspiration for how this will work: When someone searches for jobs on Google, we’ll show not only jobs available right now in their area, but also information about effective local training and education programs.  

    We’re starting a pilot of Pathways in Virginia, where we’re partnering with leading organizations in this ecosystem including the State of Virginia, the Virginia Community College System, local employers, and many others to make these local programs more discoverable through Search.

    We’re also piloting with Goodwill, the leading nonprofit job training provider in the U.S. As part of our Pathways initiative, volunteer Google engineers will work with local Goodwill organizations to ensure their education and training programs are easily found on the open web.

    What we learn from these pilots will help us develop new features and ensure information about programs are readily accessible to everyone in the U.S., and more countries in the future. We want to enable communities to thrive, and make transitions like Aaron’s possible everywhere.

    If your organization wants to collaborate and work together to bring this experience to life, join us.

    Source: Search


    Helping you along your Search journeys

    We’ve spent the last 20 years optimizing Search so it works really well for getting quick information. You ask what the capital of Costa Rica is, and we’ll tell you it’s San José. But in life we often take longer journeys, and people turn to Search for help in these moments too.

    Many searches are related to longer sessions that span multiple days, with people coming back to Search to find the latest updates on a topic or explore the range of content available. For example, you might be planning a trip, and searching for information about a destination over the course of a month. Or perhaps you regularly search for “easy dinner recipes” to help you plan you meals for the week.

    We can do better to help in these journeys, so today we’re sharing new features that help you resume tasks where you left off, keep track of ideas and content that you found useful, and get relevant suggestions of things to explore next. All of this marks a fundamental transformation in the way Search understands interests and longer journeys to help you find information.

    Retrace your steps with activity cards

    Retracing your steps online can be really difficult. While we’ve always made your Search history available in your account settings, you should be able to access it when you’re searching, so it can be useful to you in the moment.

    Now, a new activity card will help you pick up from where you left off in Search. When you revisit a query related to a task you've started in the past, we’ll show you a card with relevant pages you’ve already visited and previous queries you’ve done on this topic. This helps you retrace your steps when you might not remember which sites had that useful information you’d found earlier.
    activity card

    We’re intelligently showing this card only when it’s useful; it won’t appear for every search. And you’ll have full control over it—you can easily remove results from your history, pause seeing this card, or choose not to see it all together. This new activity card will be available in Search later this year.

    Keep track of your searches with Collections

    Another way to more easily navigate long search journeys is by adding useful content to Collections. Collections in Search help you keep track of content you’ve visited, such as a website or article or image, and quickly get back to it later.

    Now, with an improved Collections experience, you can add your content from an activity card directly to Collections. This makes it even easier to keep track of and organize the content you want to revisit.


    Collections

    We’ve also added content suggestions to help you explore topics further, based on the other content you’ve saved and things you’ve searched for. We’ll start rolling out this new Collections experience later this fall.

    Dynamic organization of Search results

    Every search journey is different, and especially if you’re not familiar with the topic, it’s not always clear what your next search should be to help you learn more. So we’re introducing a new way of dynamically organizing search results that helps you more easily determine what information to explore next.

    Rather than presenting information within a set of predetermined categories, we can intelligently show the subtopics that are most relevant to what you’re searching for and make it easy to explore information from the web, all with a single search.

    So if you’re searching for Pugs, for example, you’ll now be able to see the tabs for the most common and relevant subtopics, like breed characteristics and names, right at the top. But if you search for something else, even a different kind of dog, like Yorkshire Terriers, you’ll see options grooming tips and breed history.


    Dynamically organized results

    The best part about this feature is that it continues to stay fresh and learns over time. As new information is published to the web, these tabs stay up to date to reflect what’s most relevant to that topic. This dynamic page organization is already live for a variety of topics, and we’ll expand to more in the future.

    A new Topic Layer in the Knowledge Graph

    To enable all of these updates, Search has to understand interests and how they progress over time. So we’ve taken our existing Knowledge Graph—which understands connections between people, places, things and facts about them—and added a new layer, called the Topic Layer, engineered to deeply understand a topic space and how interests can develop over time as familiarity and expertise grow.

    The Topic Layer is built by analyzing all the content that exists on the web for a given topic and develops hundreds and thousands of subtopics. For these subtopics, we can identify the most relevant articles and videos—the ones that have shown themselves to be evergreen and continually useful, as well as fresh content on the topic. We then look at patterns to understand how these subtopics relate to each other, so we can more intelligently surface the type of content you might want to explore next.

    All of this enables experiences that make it easier than ever to explore your interests, even if you don’t have your next search in mind. We’re excited for the potential of this technology to provide more opportunities for discovery and exploration in Search.


    Source: Search


    Making visual content more useful in Search

    When Search first began, our results were just plain text. But on February 24, 2000, something changed. It was the day after the Grammy Awards, and we noticed people were searching like crazy for Jennifer Lopez’s green dress. It was clear right away that people were looking for visual information, not just plain text. In the years that followed, the growth of mobile devices and small screens made it even more important to be able to quickly scan visual results.

    Since then, we’ve been working to include more imagery and videos in Search, whether it’s illustrated weather reports, live sports clips, or our visual recipe experience. We've been able to do this in part thanks to advancements in computer vision, which help us extract concepts from images. We model hundreds of millions of fine-grained concepts for every image and video that we have in our index. For example, an image of a tiger might generate concepts like “feline,” “animal” or “big cat.” This lets us identify a picture by looking at its pixels, without needing to be told by the words on a page.

    We’ve also made a number of updates to our most immersive experience for searching visual content, Google Images. These changes are aimed at helping people better find information visually, and making it easier to pursue the things people come to Google Images for help with, like shopping for products, styling a room, or tackling a DIY project.

    Today, we’re introducing three fundamental shifts in how we think about Search, including a range of new features that use AI to make your search experience more visual and enjoyable. And when you know you want to search visually, we’re making the Google Images experience even more useful and powerful.

    Immersive visual content with stories

    Earlier this year we worked with the AMP Project to announce AMP stories, an open source library that makes it easy for anyone to create a story on the open web. While it’s still early, we’ve seen many publishers experimenting with this format and providing people with a more visual way to get information from Search and News. To help people discover these visual stories, we’ll also begin to show this content in Google Images and Discover.

    Now we’re beginning to use AI to intelligently construct AMP stories and surface this content in Search. We’re starting today with stories about notable people—like celebrities and athletes—providing a glimpse into facts and important moments from their lives in a rich, visual format. This format lets you easily tap to the articles for more information and provides a new way to discover content from the web.

    Giadastory

    Visually preview topics with featured videos in Search

    Videos can be a useful way to learn about a new topic, but it can be hard to find the most relevant videos to explore all the different facets of that topic space. Using computer vision, we’re now able to deeply understand the content of a video and help you quickly find the most useful information in a new experience called featured videos.

    Imagine you’re planning a hiking trip to Zion National Park, and you want to check out videos of what to expect and ideas for sites to visit. Since you’ve never been there, you might not know which specific landmarks to look for when mapping out your trek.

    With featured videos, we take our deep understanding of the topic space (in this case, the most important landmarks in the park) and show the most relevant videos for those subtopics. For Zion National Park, you might see a video for each attraction, like Angels Landing or the Narrows. This provides a more holistic view of the video content available for a topic, and opens up new paths to discover more.

    Zion park

    Visual journeys with Google Images

    People coming to Google Images today are looking to find information, or for help doing something—not just to see an image. So we’re announcing several new features to help you find visual information more easily, and pursue activities where having a visual reference is important.

    Tapping the power of the web page

    When you come to Google Images for help on a task, the page where an image lives is important. Whatever page you visit should help you take the next step in what you’re trying to do. Also, with many visual searches, there may not be one right answer, so you want to scan a lot of images and information before you find what you need.

    Over the last year, we’ve overhauled the Google Images algorithm to rank results that have both great images and great content on the page. For starters, the authority of a web page is now a more important signal in the ranking. If you’re doing a search for DIY shelving, the site behind the image is now more likely to be a site related to DIY projects. We also prioritize fresher content, so you’re more likely to visit a site that has been updated recently.

    Also, it wasn’t long ago that if you visited an image’s web page, it might be hard to find the specific image you were looking for when you got there. We now prioritize sites where the image is central to the page, and higher up on the page. So if you’re looking to buy a specific pair of shoes, a product page dedicated to that pair of shoes will be prioritized above, say, a category page showing a range of shoe styles.  

    Starting this week, we’ll also show more context around images, including captions that show you the title of the webpage where each image is published. This is critical to help you understand the page behind the image. We’ll also suggest related search terms at the top of the page for more guidance. We’ve already introduced this new look on mobile, and now we’re bringing it to desktop where a larger screen is important for complex tasks.

    desktop redesign

    Explore within an image using AI with Lens in Google Images

    We launched Google Lens last year to help you do more with what you see. People are already using it in their camera and on their photos—to find items in an outfit they like, learn more about landmarks, or identify that cute dog in the park. In the coming weeks, we’ll bring Lens to Google Images to help you explore and learn more about visual content you find during your searches.

    lens gif

    Lens’ AI technology analyzes images and detects objects of interest within them. If you select one of these objects, Lens will show you relevant images, many of which link to product pages so you can continue your search or buy the item you’re interested in. Using your finger on a mobile device screen, Lens will also let you “draw” on any part of an image, even if it’s not preselected by Lens, to trigger related results and dive even deeper on what’s in your image.

    We hope these changes will make it easier—and more visually interesting—to traverse the web, find information, and pursue your interests.


    Source: Search


    20 things you didn’t know you could do with Search

    Search has been helping you settle bets since 1998 (turns out there is some caffeine in decaf coffee), but now that we’re 20 years in, we’ve built dozens of other useful features and tools to help you get through your day. Let’s jump into some of these secret (and not-so-secret) tricks to up your Search game.

    Search as your everyday sidekick

    Here are some of the ways you can plan your day and stay in the know with Search.

    1. Fill your schedule with nearby events:With your phone, simply search for [events near me] or for a specific event type like [food festivals] and you’ll see listings for local activities from around the web. With a recent update, you can also browse events based on your interests. 
    2. Movie showtimes and tickets:When you’re in the mood for a movie, Search brings together showtimes, theater locations, and ratings all in one place. It makes it easy to decide which movie and location work best for you (and then to buy your tickets in advance). 
    3. Recipe Search:If you’re looking for a recipe in a pinch, just search on mobile for whatever you’re craving (say, chicken parmesan) and you’ll see a carousel of recipe suggestions.
    4. Live sports scores:Search makes it easy to stay up on the latest scores, whether you’re a fervent fantasy sports aficionado or a casual fan. Type in the name of your favorite team or league (like the NFL), and get real-time scores and recaps from recent games.
    5. Styling and shopping help from Google Images:When you're exploring style ideas or browsing for your next buy with Google Images, pictures of products that are available to purchase are marked with a "products" badge in the Google app and mobile web. Images marked “product” include price, reviews and availability, making it easier and faster to research and shop.

    Helping you navigate important decisions

    When you’re looking for information related to your career, education or health, we provide quick access to tools and reliable resources to help you make informed decisions.

    6. Find your next job:Now available in more than 90 countries around the world, you can search for jobs right on Google. Try searching for [jobs near me] or [retail jobs] to explore jobs from across the web. You can also save jobs set up alerts, map your potential commute and click through to apply.
    7. Discover the right college for you: Right on Search, you can find more information about four-year U.S. colleges, including information about admissions, cost and student life. You can dig into data around graduation rates and typical annual income 10 years after enrollment.
    8. Help with health questions:When searching for common health conditions, like influenza or a sprained ankle, you’ll find relevant medical facts in a knowledge panel. We’ll show you typical symptoms, treatments and other details—like how common the condition is, whether it’s critical or contagious, ages of people affected and more—all from reliable sources and vetted by doctors. If you search for clinical depression on your mobile device, we’ll also provide easy access to a clinically validated private screening test, the results of which can be helpful in conversations with your own care provider.

    Time-saving tools

    When you need a quick answer to help you with daily tasks, we provide tools right in Search to help you on your way:

    9. Figure out who owes what:You can use Google to calculate your tip when you’re in a restaurant. Simply search for [tip calculator], enter the cost of your meal, and the percentage you want to tip. You can even ask Google to help you split the bill evenly with your friends.
    10. Convert cash:If you’re heading out on a trip, here’s a tool that makes a ton of cents: you can get real-time currency conversions right on Google. Search for something like [$500 in Euros] and you’ll get a box with the current exchange rate and an interactive graph to let you explore the change over time.
    11. Track packages:You can enter any UPS, USPS, or Fedex tracking number directly into the Google search bar, and it’ll show you the tracking information about your package.
    12. Quick access to appointments, flights and more:If you don’t want to toggle through your tabs, Search can help you find information about your upcoming plans. If you’re logged into your Google account, searching for “my trips” or “my appointments” will show you (and only you!) relevant results about upcoming flights, hotel reservations and your schedule from Gmail and Google Calendar.
    13. Get the numbers about your noms:You can search for nutritional information and find out the number of calories in your everyday foods. For example, you can ask “how much fat is there in chocolate cake?” or “how much sugar is there in tomato sauce?” and Google will break down the nutritional stats for you.
    14. Definitions and synonyms:You can use Google as a dictionary and thesaurus. Try searching for [what does loquacious mean] and you might find yourself talking nonstop about this feature. 

    For the savvy searchers

    When you’re asking a complicated question or hoping to dig deep on a topic, Search can be your co-researcher.

    15. Ask complex multi-part questions:You can ask Google “compositional queries” that require us to solve the first piece of the question before addressing the second part. For example, if you search [when were the members of NSYNC born], you will (feel old and) see the birthdates of Justin, JC, Chris, Lance and Joey.
    16. Search with an image:On your computer, upload your own photo to Google Images to find the same or similar photos on the web. Click on the camera icon in Google Images and Google will also tell you the origin and other details about the photo. Now you can know where that meme really came from.
    17. Check how to say massive numbers correctly:Type in any long number and add “=english” to the end of your search and you’ll find the correct way to spell out the number in words. Try it for 6006131520 (hint: it’s not “Google is 20”).
    18. Search within a time period:You can narrow your search to a specific date range and see only content published during that time. This can be useful if you’re looking for insight into how a news topic may have been covered at a certain point in time or looking for resources for a history paper, perhaps.
    19. Search within a site:If you’re looking for an article or page from a specific publisher, Search will let you focus your results on that single website. Just add “site:” ahead of the web URL to limit your results to that publisher, and you can then sort by recency or add additional keywords to narrow down your search.
    20. Advanced Search:If all of these tricks still don’t get you what you need, you can use Advanced Search to apply a number of filters, like specifying terms you want to exclude or only find pages that are in certain languages, regions, sites or file formats.


    But right now, I’m not feeling that advanced—so will go back to searching for cake recipes for Google’s birthday.

    Source: Search


    Making it easier to discover datasets

    In today's world, scientists in many disciplines and a growing number of journalists live and breathe data. There are many thousands of data repositories on the web, providing access to millions of datasets; and local and national governments around the world publish their data as well. To enable easy access to this data, we launched Dataset Search, so that scientists, data journalists, data geeks, or anyone else can find the data required for their work and their stories, or simply to satisfy their intellectual curiosity.

    Similar to how Google Scholar works, Dataset Search lets you find datasets wherever they’re hosted, whether it’s a publisher's site, a digital library, or an author's personal web page. To create Dataset search, we developed guidelines for dataset providers to describe their data in a way that Google (and other search engines) can better understand the content of their pages. These guidelines include  salient information about datasets: who created the dataset, when it was published, how the data was collected, what the terms are for using the data, etc. We then collect and link this information, analyze where different versions of the same dataset might be, and find publications that may be describing or discussing the dataset. Our approach is based on an open standard for describing this information (schema.org) and anybody who publishes data can describe their dataset this way. We encourage dataset providers, large and small, to adopt this common standard so that all datasets are part of this robust ecosystem.

    In this new release, you can find references to most datasets in environmental and social sciences, as well as data from other disciplines including government data and data provided by news organizations, such as ProPublica. As more data repositories use the schema.org standard to describe their datasets, the variety and coverage of datasets that users will find in Dataset Search, will continue to grow.

    Dataset Search works in multiple languages with support for additional languages coming soon. Simply enter what you are looking for and we will help guide you to the published dataset on the repository provider’s site.

    For example, if you wanted to analyze daily weather records, you might try this query in Dataset Search:

    dataset

    You’ll see data from NASA and NOAA, as well as from academic repositories such as Harvard's Dataverse and Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR). Ed Kearns, Chief Data Officer at NOAA, is a strong supporter of this project and helped NOAA make many of their datasets searchable in this tool. “This type of search has long been the dream for many researchers in the open data and science communities” he said. “And for NOAA, whose mission includes the sharing of our data with others, this tool is key to making our data more accessible to an even wider community of users.”

    This launch is one of a series of initiatives to bring datasets more prominently into our products. We recently made it easier to discover tabular data in Search, which uses this same metadata along with the linked tabular data to provide answers to queries directly in search results. While that initiative focused more on news organizations and data journalists, Dataset search can be useful to a much broader audience, whether you're looking for scientific data, government data, or data provided by news organizations.

    A search tool like this one is only as good as the metadata that data publishers are willing to provide. We hope to see many of you use the open standards to describe your data, enabling our users to find the data that they are looking for. If you publish data and don't see it in the results, visit our instructions on our developers site which also includes a link to ask questions and provide feedback.

    Source: Search