Tag Archives: Google Search

Get more visual results when you shop on desktop

Shopping is about so much more than just buying — it’s also about browsing, researching and narrowing down your options to get the right product at the right price. It’s easy to take each of these steps on Google, thanks to our AI-enhanced Shopping Graph. The Shopping Graph now understands more than 35 billion product listings and can quickly organize shopping information online — making it much easier and more intuitive to find what you're looking for.

Last month we announced several new features coming to Google, including more visual ways to shop on mobile. And now, in the U.S., we’re bringing you a more visual shopping experience on desktop.

An animation of the search “shop ceramic vase” on desktop shows a more visual shopping results page, including product listings, articles with featured imagery and stores near you. The animation also clicks into the product listing of a ceramic vase shaped like a strawberry, which then opens a sidebar on the right hand side showing different merchants the product is available from and product reviews.

Whether you’re looking for clothes, electronics, beauty products or home goods on desktop, you’ll see a more visual feed of shopping results that includes products, brands, articles and videos from across the web. New dynamic filters will also help you refine your search to find something specific. So if you’re shopping for a new coffee maker on desktop, you can search “shop coffee makers” and filter by type, brand, retailer, nearby or on sale to find the best option. Our results and filters are dynamic so they'll update to show you the freshest content.

A search bar shows searches for “shop plant stands,” “shop mid century modern chairs” and “shop coffee makers.” Each search shows a page of shopping results with visuals of product listings.

You can also read up on products without interrupting your search. Just click a product to instantly see more details about it — like offers from different merchants and reviews — all without leaving your Search results page. Once you’ve found something you want, just click to go to the retailer’s site.

Check out this new shopping experience on desktop today to quickly find what you need — or discover your next dream purchase.

Source: Search


Get more visual results when you shop on desktop

Shopping is about so much more than just buying — it’s also about browsing, researching and narrowing down your options to get the right product at the right price. It’s easy to take each of these steps on Google, thanks to our AI-enhanced Shopping Graph. The Shopping Graph now understands more than 35 billion product listings and can quickly organize shopping information online — making it much easier and more intuitive to find what you're looking for.

Last month we announced several new features coming to Google, including more visual ways to shop on mobile. And now, in the U.S., we’re bringing you a more visual shopping experience on desktop.

An animation of the search “shop ceramic vase” on desktop shows a more visual shopping results page, including product listings, articles with featured imagery and stores near you. The animation also clicks into the product listing of a ceramic vase shaped like a strawberry, which then opens a sidebar on the right hand side showing different merchants the product is available from and product reviews.

Whether you’re looking for clothes, electronics, beauty products or home goods on desktop, you’ll see a more visual feed of shopping results that includes products, brands, articles and videos from across the web. New dynamic filters will also help you refine your search to find something specific. So if you’re shopping for a new coffee maker on desktop, you can search “shop coffee makers” and filter by type, brand, retailer, nearby or on sale to find the best option. Our results and filters are dynamic so they'll update to show you the freshest content.

A search bar shows searches for “shop plant stands,” “shop mid century modern chairs” and “shop coffee makers.” Each search shows a page of shopping results with visuals of product listings.

You can also read up on products without interrupting your search. Just click a product to instantly see more details about it — like offers from different merchants and reviews — all without leaving your Search results page. Once you’ve found something you want, just click to go to the retailer’s site.

Check out this new shopping experience on desktop today to quickly find what you need — or discover your next dream purchase.

Source: Search


Get more visual results when you shop on desktop

Shopping is about so much more than just buying — it’s also about browsing, researching and narrowing down your options to get the right product at the right price. It’s easy to take each of these steps on Google, thanks to our AI-enhanced Shopping Graph. The Shopping Graph now understands more than 35 billion product listings and can quickly organize shopping information online — making it much easier and more intuitive to find what you're looking for.

Last month we announced several new features coming to Google, including more visual ways to shop on mobile. And now, in the U.S., we’re bringing you a more visual shopping experience on desktop.

An animation of the search “shop ceramic vase” on desktop shows a more visual shopping results page, including product listings, articles with featured imagery and stores near you. The animation also clicks into the product listing of a ceramic vase shaped like a strawberry, which then opens a sidebar on the right hand side showing different merchants the product is available from and product reviews.

Whether you’re looking for clothes, electronics, beauty products or home goods on desktop, you’ll see a more visual feed of shopping results that includes products, brands, articles and videos from across the web. New dynamic filters will also help you refine your search to find something specific. So if you’re shopping for a new coffee maker on desktop, you can search “shop coffee makers” and filter by type, brand, retailer, nearby or on sale to find the best option. Our results and filters are dynamic so they'll update to show you the freshest content.

A search bar shows searches for “shop plant stands,” “shop mid century modern chairs” and “shop coffee makers.” Each search shows a page of shopping results with visuals of product listings.

You can also read up on products without interrupting your search. Just click a product to instantly see more details about it — like offers from different merchants and reviews — all without leaving your Search results page. Once you’ve found something you want, just click to go to the retailer’s site.

Check out this new shopping experience on desktop today to quickly find what you need — or discover your next dream purchase.

Source: Search


Get more visual results when you shop on desktop

Shopping is about so much more than just buying — it’s also about browsing, researching and narrowing down your options to get the right product at the right price. It’s easy to take each of these steps on Google, thanks to our AI-enhanced Shopping Graph. The Shopping Graph now understands more than 35 billion product listings and can quickly organize shopping information online — making it much easier and more intuitive to find what you're looking for.

Last month we announced several new features coming to Google, including more visual ways to shop on mobile. And now, in the U.S., we’re bringing you a more visual shopping experience on desktop.

An animation of the search “shop ceramic vase” on desktop shows a more visual shopping results page, including product listings, articles with featured imagery and stores near you. The animation also clicks into the product listing of a ceramic vase shaped like a strawberry, which then opens a sidebar on the right hand side showing different merchants the product is available from and product reviews.

Whether you’re looking for clothes, electronics, beauty products or home goods on desktop, you’ll see a more visual feed of shopping results that includes products, brands, articles and videos from across the web. New dynamic filters will also help you refine your search to find something specific. So if you’re shopping for a new coffee maker on desktop, you can search “shop coffee makers” and filter by type, brand, retailer, nearby or on sale to find the best option. Our results and filters are dynamic so they'll update to show you the freshest content.

A search bar shows searches for “shop plant stands,” “shop mid century modern chairs” and “shop coffee makers.” Each search shows a page of shopping results with visuals of product listings.

You can also read up on products without interrupting your search. Just click a product to instantly see more details about it — like offers from different merchants and reviews — all without leaving your Search results page. Once you’ve found something you want, just click to go to the retailer’s site.

Check out this new shopping experience on desktop today to quickly find what you need — or discover your next dream purchase.

Source: Search


12 things you didn’t know about Google Doodles

Every August, Jessica Yu and a carefully selected committee of Googlers from various backgrounds begin the delicate — and joyful — process of choosing which Google Doodles will appear on the Google homepage in the coming year. They begin meeting regularly in the summer and usually wrap up by late October. Sometimes they gather in person, other times over Google Meet. Either way, it adds up to hours of discussion and work each week, all dedicated to making Doodle magic happen.

“We want to create that feeling of surprise and delight when you’re going about your day-to-day life, and then — tada! — a little gift,” Jessica says. “We want people to learn something, or laugh, or feel inspired.”

As the team lead, part of Jessica's job during this annual selection is to help choose Doodles from a massive pile of submissions (which come from Doodle team members, other Googlers and then from people completely outside Google), discuss them with this committee and a network of global cultural consultants and then decide on the best way to bring them to life. "You have to figure out how you want to depict this topic or person,” she says. “Should it be an image or an animated GIF? Or should it be interactive, or even a game.”

Perla Campos, Marketing lead for Doodles, says this process takes so long partly because getting the most diverse and inclusive collection of Doodles requires the team to hear from Googlers all over the world. “It’s a balance of having a lot of cooks in the kitchen but also making sure we have everyone involved,” she says. The other reason selections are so drawn out: Perla estimates that the team looks over “a couple thousand” Doodle ideas. “It’s a puzzle,” she says. “It’s a huge puzzle.”

While Doodles are beloved inside Google and by many who visit the homepage, more goes into them than you might think. So I asked a few Googlers on the Doodles team to share some of the surprising and, yes, delightful details and stories from behind the scenes.

  1. The Doodle team receives about 7,000 submissions a year. Jessica says the hardest part of the team’s job is definitely sifting through Doodle submissions — because there are so many great ones. The team gets hundreds of requests every day from people who email [email protected], and Googlers are pitching their concepts all the time, too.
Four people sitting at a conference table. Two of them have laptops open. They all swiveled in their seats looking at sketch work on a large screen behind them. One person gestures toward it.

A few members of the Doodle team discussing the 50th Anniversary of the Moon Landing Doodle.

One really important part of this submission process is working with Local Doodle Managers who represent different global countries and clue the core team into what important moments and milestones will resonate the most on a local level. Not all Doodles display everywhere; some are specific to their regions, and these country-specific teammates help manage these requests. “We literally couldn’t do it without submissions and then help from our Local Doodle Managers,” Perla says.

2. We published our 5,000th Doodle in 2020. It celebrated Slovakia’s Freedom and Democracy Day, the country’s annual holiday commemorating heroic efforts by local youth activists. In contrast, the very first Doodle was published way back in 1998, and was a bit of a joke from Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin to remind Googlers they would be out of office for Burning Man.

The original Google logo with an exclamation point at the end. The Burning Man icon is behind the second “o.”

The first Doodle ever.

3. We have a public archivewhere you can check out every Doodle ever made. It launched in December 2011 (and keep an eye out, because it’s getting a makeover in the near future). In the archive, you can read about each Doodle and learn about the topic at hand, and often read about the artist as well — there’s also a section for interactive Doodles you can revisit. You can even check out the history of Doodles for any specific day. (And since we’re talking about learning more about Doodles: Did you know you can click each Doodle for more information about its theme? Just a little pro tip.)

A screenshot of the Doodles Archive. At the top is an entry about Kimiko Tsumura’s 120th birthday with an illustration of a Japanese woman in traditional makeup next to a bonsai tree.

The Doodles archive.

4. The Doodles team has a set of principles that every single Doodle follows. A major one is that Doodles should aim to delight and surprise people, as Jessica mentioned above. Another key principle: Doodles are never dedicated to someone who’s still alive, because person-focused Doodles are meant to honor someone’s lifetime achievements. Perla says Stephen Hawking is a good example of why the team has this principle. “We were able to create this really cool video Doodle in partnership with his family to honor him. We were able to give him a proper tribute.”

A video explaining the Google Doodle to honor Stephen Hawking.
10:25

Doodles also never promote brands. “This is a gift to our audience. We don’t want it to feel like an ad,” Jessica explains. The team also strives to showcase high-quality art and technology, and aims to select or create Doodles that are inclusive of everyone.

5. The first animated Doodle premiered on Halloween 2000. It was the work of guest artist Lorie Loeb. Halloween Doodles would go on to become an annual focus for animation and engineering feats (more on that later!).

An animated gif of the old Google logo with two blinking pumpkins instead of the “o’s” and an animated spider web attached to the “l” and “e.”

6. Doodles aren’t all entirely digital. While plenty of artists use digital mediums to create Doodles, others start with sketches or paintings — or even other items — to create their Doodles. One example was a Veteran’s Day Doodle made by a Veteran who’s also an artist. “She took old military uniforms from all different branches and made a paper scroll of them all together,” Jessica says. “It’s an amazing piece of art.”

7. Many Doodles are the work of multiple teams at Google. For instance, the first AI-powered Doodle honoring Johann Sebastian Bach that came out in 2019 was the work of the engineering Doodle team and Google’s machine learning department. “It was such a great synthesis of an interesting idea plus this technology that we were working on at Google,” says lead Doodle engineer Tom Tabanao. “It was a cool way to make that technology accessible to people.”

A video explaining the creator of the Sebestian Bach Doodle.
10:25

8. The Halloween 2018 Doodleactually came out of a Googler hackathon. The 2018 Halloween Doodle was a multiplayer game that Tom wanted to make. “I thought it was an impossible goal but we made a demo and we saw how fun it was,” he says. “So we started building it out and testing it more, and then we held a hackathon for a week to work on it. By the end of the week, people were playing this really simple game for hours.” So they set to work on the Doodle, which became a major engineering feat that took literal years to make.

A screenshot of the Hallowee game. There’s a smiling cartoon character in the middle of the black screen, and two buttons in the lower right hand corner that read “host game” and “skip tutorial.”

And speaking of Doodles that took a long time to make…

9. The Selena homage, which launched in October 2017, underwent a major makeover.

Perla actually pitched the idea for a Selena Doodle when she was working as Spain’s Local Doodle Manager. “Obviously, huge bias on my end! I had a personal stake in that one,” she says. “When I heard it was picked for the next year I was like, ‘That’s great,’ but also, ‘I’m so jealous I won’t work on it!’” She'd taken a new role on the Doodle team, so she wouldn't directly be working on the Selena Doodle.

A video explaining the process of creating the Selena Doodle.
10:25

But upon learning the intention of the team to create a static illustration honoring the entertainer, she asked if the team could rethink things. “I asked, 'can we hold it so that we can try and license music and work with the family? I really think we should do something amazing here.'” They scrapped the original proposal and decided to go bigger — much, much bigger, with music and video, and eventually a massive audience; it ended up becoming one of the most popular video Doodles ever.

To honor Selena and talk about the Doodle, her sister, Suzette, even visited Google to discuss how her family collaborated with the Doodle team on the project.

A video of Googler Perla Campos meeting with Selena's sister, Suzette.
10:25

10. The series of Champion Island game Doodles from 2021 had the longest production process. The Doodle — er, Doodles — launched as a series starting in July 2021 to celebrate the Olympics. It was originally supposed to debut the previous summer. But because COVID-19 delayed the entire Olympic games, the interactive game was also pushed back…a whole year.

A video of the behind the scenes of the Halloween Doodle.
10:25

With six sport mini games, 24 side quests, multiple endings and over three hours of gameplay, it's the most expansive Doodle ever made. It even contains easter eggs for other Doodle games, like Magic Cat Academy and Pangolin Love.

11. In 2009, we created the first same-day Doodle when water was discovered on the moon. Artist Jennifer Hom worked for just a few hours and then it went live. “I was sitting at my desk at 9 a.m. PT, when I stumbled on an article about this current event,” she wrote in the Doodle archive.

The old Google logo written with a water-like effect, and the second “o” is the Moon.

“I quickly sent the article to my team and, by the time I was about to take a bite out of my lunch, I received a call to have this Doodle sketched, drafted, finished and live on all our homepages in four hours. It was an exciting day for a Doodler and the world of science!”

Sometimes the team has the luxury of taking weeks or even a year to produce a Doodle. For the really quick turnaround ones, though, a small dedicated team of Doodlers keeps an eye out for events that might be a fit. (Or sometimes another Doodler stumbles on one of these concepts, like Jennifer did!). Then they have to make sure the idea has the green light from everyone from marketing to policy and beyond…and, oh, is there an artist or animator within the Doodle team who can turn this around in time? “Everyone’s sort of on standby while this is happening,” Perla says. Once the Doodle’s almost ready, they ask what regions want to opt into displaying it and then…well, they upload it.

12. The team often turns to cultural consultants for feedback. “If a Doodle is about or for a community, we bring that community into the process,” Perla says. This includes hiring guest artists, but also working with people beyond that to get the work right and truly represent a group accurately. “For example, we ran a Doodle during Native American Heritage Month last year honoring a Zuni artist, and we partnered with a guest artist from the tribe but also a Zuni community cultural consultant the tribal government connected us with.”

A behind the scenes video of the work on the Native American Heritage Month Doodle.
10:25

The Doodle team was able to run things by the consultant to make sure they felt it rang true. “It’s important we be real with ourselves and say, ‘We don’t know about this topic — but let’s find people who do, so it’s authentic.’” After all, Perla says, the goal of Doodles is to make sure everyone, everywhere feels represented and valued.

Source: Search


12 things you didn’t know about Google Doodles

Every August, Jessica Yu and a carefully selected committee of Googlers from various backgrounds begin the delicate — and joyful — process of choosing which Google Doodles will appear on the Google homepage in the coming year. They begin meeting regularly in the summer and usually wrap up by late October. Sometimes they gather in person, other times over Google Meet. Either way, it adds up to hours of discussion and work each week, all dedicated to making Doodle magic happen.

“We want to create that feeling of surprise and delight when you’re going about your day-to-day life, and then — tada! — a little gift,” Jessica says. “We want people to learn something, or laugh, or feel inspired.”

As the team lead, part of Jessica's job during this annual selection is to help choose Doodles from a massive pile of submissions (which come from Doodle team members, other Googlers and then from people completely outside Google), discuss them with this committee and a network of global cultural consultants and then decide on the best way to bring them to life. "You have to figure out how you want to depict this topic or person,” she says. “Should it be an image or an animated GIF? Or should it be interactive, or even a game.”

Perla Campos, Marketing lead for Doodles, says this process takes so long partly because getting the most diverse and inclusive collection of Doodles requires the team to hear from Googlers all over the world. “It’s a balance of having a lot of cooks in the kitchen but also making sure we have everyone involved,” she says. The other reason selections are so drawn out: Perla estimates that the team looks over “a couple thousand” Doodle ideas. “It’s a puzzle,” she says. “It’s a huge puzzle.”

While Doodles are beloved inside Google and by many who visit the homepage, more goes into them than you might think. So I asked a few Googlers on the Doodles team to share some of the surprising and, yes, delightful details and stories from behind the scenes.

  1. The Doodle team receives about 7,000 submissions a year. Jessica says the hardest part of the team’s job is definitely sifting through Doodle submissions — because there are so many great ones. The team gets hundreds of requests every day from people who email [email protected], and Googlers are pitching their concepts all the time, too.
Four people sitting at a conference table. Two of them have laptops open. They all swiveled in their seats looking at sketch work on a large screen behind them. One person gestures toward it.

A few members of the Doodle team discussing the 50th Anniversary of the Moon Landing Doodle.

One really important part of this submission process is working with Local Doodle Managers who represent different global countries and clue the core team into what important moments and milestones will resonate the most on a local level. Not all Doodles display everywhere; some are specific to their regions, and these country-specific teammates help manage these requests. “We literally couldn’t do it without submissions and then help from our Local Doodle Managers,” Perla says.

2. We published our 5,000th Doodle in 2020. It celebrated Slovakia’s Freedom and Democracy Day, the country’s annual holiday commemorating heroic efforts by local youth activists. In contrast, the very first Doodle was published way back in 1998, and was a bit of a joke from Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin to remind Googlers they would be out of office for Burning Man.

The original Google logo with an exclamation point at the end. The Burning Man icon is behind the second “o.”

The first Doodle ever.

3. We have a public archivewhere you can check out every Doodle ever made. It launched in December 2011 (and keep an eye out, because it’s getting a makeover in the near future). In the archive, you can read about each Doodle and learn about the topic at hand, and often read about the artist as well — there’s also a section for interactive Doodles you can revisit. You can even check out the history of Doodles for any specific day. (And since we’re talking about learning more about Doodles: Did you know you can click each Doodle for more information about its theme? Just a little pro tip.)

A screenshot of the Doodles Archive. At the top is an entry about Kimiko Tsumura’s 120th birthday with an illustration of a Japanese woman in traditional makeup next to a bonsai tree.

The Doodles archive.

4. The Doodles team has a set of principles that every single Doodle follows. A major one is that Doodles should aim to delight and surprise people, as Jessica mentioned above. Another key principle: Doodles are never dedicated to someone who’s still alive, because person-focused Doodles are meant to honor someone’s lifetime achievements. Perla says Stephen Hawking is a good example of why the team has this principle. “We were able to create this really cool video Doodle in partnership with his family to honor him. We were able to give him a proper tribute.”

A video explaining the Google Doodle to honor Stephen Hawking.
10:25

Doodles also never promote brands. “This is a gift to our audience. We don’t want it to feel like an ad,” Jessica explains. The team also strives to showcase high-quality art and technology, and aims to select or create Doodles that are inclusive of everyone.

5. The first animated Doodle premiered on Halloween 2000. It was the work of guest artist Lorie Loeb. Halloween Doodles would go on to become an annual focus for animation and engineering feats (more on that later!).

An animated gif of the old Google logo with two blinking pumpkins instead of the “o’s” and an animated spider web attached to the “l” and “e.”

6. Doodles aren’t all entirely digital. While plenty of artists use digital mediums to create Doodles, others start with sketches or paintings — or even other items — to create their Doodles. One example was a Veteran’s Day Doodle made by a Veteran who’s also an artist. “She took old military uniforms from all different branches and made a paper scroll of them all together,” Jessica says. “It’s an amazing piece of art.”

7. Many Doodles are the work of multiple teams at Google. For instance, the first AI-powered Doodle honoring Johann Sebastian Bach that came out in 2019 was the work of the engineering Doodle team and Google’s machine learning department. “It was such a great synthesis of an interesting idea plus this technology that we were working on at Google,” says lead Doodle engineer Tom Tabanao. “It was a cool way to make that technology accessible to people.”

A video explaining the creator of the Sebestian Bach Doodle.
10:25

8. The Halloween 2018 Doodleactually came out of a Googler hackathon. The 2018 Halloween Doodle was a multiplayer game that Tom wanted to make. “I thought it was an impossible goal but we made a demo and we saw how fun it was,” he says. “So we started building it out and testing it more, and then we held a hackathon for a week to work on it. By the end of the week, people were playing this really simple game for hours.” So they set to work on the Doodle, which became a major engineering feat that took literal years to make.

A screenshot of the Hallowee game. There’s a smiling cartoon character in the middle of the black screen, and two buttons in the lower right hand corner that read “host game” and “skip tutorial.”

And speaking of Doodles that took a long time to make…

9. The Selena homage, which launched in October 2017, underwent a major makeover.

Perla actually pitched the idea for a Selena Doodle when she was working as Spain’s Local Doodle Manager. “Obviously, huge bias on my end! I had a personal stake in that one,” she says. “When I heard it was picked for the next year I was like, ‘That’s great,’ but also, ‘I’m so jealous I won’t work on it!’” She'd taken a new role on the Doodle team, so she wouldn't directly be working on the Selena Doodle.

A video explaining the process of creating the Selena Doodle.
10:25

But upon learning the intention of the team to create a static illustration honoring the entertainer, she asked if the team could rethink things. “I asked, 'can we hold it so that we can try and license music and work with the family? I really think we should do something amazing here.'” They scrapped the original proposal and decided to go bigger — much, much bigger, with music and video, and eventually a massive audience; it ended up becoming one of the most popular video Doodles ever.

To honor Selena and talk about the Doodle, her sister, Suzette, even visited Google to discuss how her family collaborated with the Doodle team on the project.

A video of Googler Perla Campos meeting with Selena's sister, Suzette.
10:25

10. The series of Champion Island game Doodles from 2021 had the longest production process. The Doodle — er, Doodles — launched as a series starting in July 2021 to celebrate the Olympics. It was originally supposed to debut the previous summer. But because COVID-19 delayed the entire Olympic games, the interactive game was also pushed back…a whole year.

A video of the behind the scenes of the Halloween Doodle.
10:25

With six sport mini games, 24 side quests, multiple endings and over three hours of gameplay, it's the most expansive Doodle ever made. It even contains easter eggs for other Doodle games, like Magic Cat Academy and Pangolin Love.

11. In 2009, we created the first same-day Doodle when water was discovered on the moon. Artist Jennifer Hom worked for just a few hours and then it went live. “I was sitting at my desk at 9 a.m. PT, when I stumbled on an article about this current event,” she wrote in the Doodle archive.

The old Google logo written with a water-like effect, and the second “o” is the Moon.

“I quickly sent the article to my team and, by the time I was about to take a bite out of my lunch, I received a call to have this Doodle sketched, drafted, finished and live on all our homepages in four hours. It was an exciting day for a Doodler and the world of science!”

Sometimes the team has the luxury of taking weeks or even a year to produce a Doodle. For the really quick turnaround ones, though, a small dedicated team of Doodlers keeps an eye out for events that might be a fit. (Or sometimes another Doodler stumbles on one of these concepts, like Jennifer did!). Then they have to make sure the idea has the green light from everyone from marketing to policy and beyond…and, oh, is there an artist or animator within the Doodle team who can turn this around in time? “Everyone’s sort of on standby while this is happening,” Perla says. Once the Doodle’s almost ready, they ask what regions want to opt into displaying it and then…well, they upload it.

12. The team often turns to cultural consultants for feedback. “If a Doodle is about or for a community, we bring that community into the process,” Perla says. This includes hiring guest artists, but also working with people beyond that to get the work right and truly represent a group accurately. “For example, we ran a Doodle during Native American Heritage Month last year honoring a Zuni artist, and we partnered with a guest artist from the tribe but also a Zuni community cultural consultant the tribal government connected us with.”

A behind the scenes video of the work on the Native American Heritage Month Doodle.
10:25

The Doodle team was able to run things by the consultant to make sure they felt it rang true. “It’s important we be real with ourselves and say, ‘We don’t know about this topic — but let’s find people who do, so it’s authentic.’” After all, Perla says, the goal of Doodles is to make sure everyone, everywhere feels represented and valued.

Source: Search


New ways we’re helping you find high-quality information

People turn to Google every day for information in the moments that matter most. Sometimes that’s to look for the best recipe for dinner, other times it’s to check the facts about a claim they heard about from a friend.

No matter what you’re searching for, we aim to connect you with high-quality information, and help you understand and evaluate that information. We have deeply invested in both information quality and information literacy on Google Search and News, and today we have a few new developments about this important work.

Our latest quality improvements to featured snippets

We design our ranking systems to surface relevant information from the most reliable sources available – sources that demonstrate expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness. We train our systems to identify and prioritize these signals of reliability. And we’re constantly refining these systems — we make thousands of improvements every year to help people get high-quality information quickly.

Today we’re announcing one such improvement: a significant innovation to improve the quality of featured snippets. Featured snippets are the descriptive box at the top of the page that prominently highlights a piece of information from a result and the source, in response to your query. They’re helpful both for people searching on Google, and for web publishers, as featured snippets drive traffic to sites.

By using our latest AI model, Multitask Unified Model (MUM), our systems can now understand the notion of consensus, which is when multiple high-quality sources on the web all agree on the same fact. Our systems can check snippet callouts (the word or words called out above the featured snippet in a larger font) against other high-quality sources on the web, to see if there’s a general consensus for that callout, even if sources use different words or concepts to describe the same thing. We've found that this consensus-based technique has meaningfully improved the quality and helpfulness of featured snippet callouts.

A screenshot shows a query for “how long does it take for light from the sun to reach earth,” with a featured snippet highlighting a helpful article about the question and a bolded callout saying “8 and ⅓ minutes.”

With a consensus-based technique, we’re improving featured snippets.

AI models are also helping our systems understand when a featured snippet might not be the most helpful way to present information. This is particularly helpful for questions where there is no answer: for example, a recent search for “when did snoopy assassinate Abraham Lincoln” provided a snippet highlighting an accurate date and information about Lincoln’s assassination, but this clearly isn’t the most helpful way to display this result.

We’ve trained our systems to get better at detecting these sorts of false premises, which are not very common, but are cases where it’s not helpful to show a featured snippet. We’ve reduced the triggering of featured snippets in these cases by 40% with this update.

Information literacy

Beyond designing our systems to return high-quality information, we also build information literacy features in Google Search that help people evaluate information, whether they found it on social media or in conversations with family or friends. In fact, in a study this year, researchers found that people regularly use Google as a tool to validate information encountered on other platforms. We’ve invested in building a growing range of information literacy features — including Fact Check Explorer, Reverse image search, and About this result — and today, we’re announcing several updates to make these features even more helpful.

Expanding About this result to more places

About this result helps you see more context about any Search result before you ever visit a web page, just by tapping the three dots next to the result. Since launching last year, people have used About this result more than 2.4 billion times, and we’re bringing it to even more people and places - with eight more languages including Portuguese (PT), French (FR), Italian (IT), German (DE), Dutch (NL), Spanish (ES), Japanese (JP) and Indonesian (ID), coming later this year.

This week, we’re adding more context to About this result, such as how widely a source is circulated, online reviews about a source or company, whether a company is owned by another entity, or even when our systems can’t find much info about a source – all pieces of information that can provide important context.

And we’ve now launched About this page in the Google app, so you can get helpful context about websites as you’re browsing the web. Just swipe up from the navigation bar on any page to get more information about the source – helping you explore with confidence, no matter where you are online.

A gif shows the About this page feature, where someone swipes up on the navigation bar in the Google app while browsing the website for the Rainforest Alliance, and sees a panel with information about the source from across the web.

With About this page in the Google app, you can get helpful context on websites as you’re browsing.

Expanding content advisories for information gaps

Sometimes interest in a breaking news topic travels faster than facts, or there isn’t enough reliable information online about a given subject. Information literacy experts often refer to these situations as data voids. To address these, we show content advisories in situations when a topic is rapidly evolving, indicating that it might be best to check back later when more sources are available.

Now we’re expanding content advisories to searches where our systems don’t have high confidence in the overall quality of the results available for the search. This doesn’t mean that no helpful information is available, or that a particular result is low-quality. These notices provide context about the whole set of results on the page, and you can always see the results for your query, even when the advisory is present.

A gif shows a content advisory that says “It looks like there aren’t many great results for this search” along with tips like checking the source and trying new search terms.

New content advisories on searches where our systems don’t have high confidence in the overall quality of the results.

Educating people about misinformation

Beyond our products, we’re making investments into programs and partnerships to help educate people about misinformation. Since 2018, the Google News Initiative (GNI) has invested nearly $75 million in projects and partnerships working to strengthen media literacy and combat misinformation around the world.

Today, we’re announcing that Google is partnering with MediaWise at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies and PBS NewsHour Student Reporting Labs to develop information literacy lesson plans for teachers of middle and high school students. It will be available for free to teachers using PBS Learning Media and for download on Poynter’s website. We’ve partnered with MediaWise since it was founded. And today’s announcement builds on the GNI’s support of its microlearning course through text and WhatsApp called Find Facts Fast.

We also announced today the results of a survey conducted by the Poynter Institute and YouGov, with support from Google, on the ways people across generational lines verify information. You can read more in our blog post.

Helping people everywhere find the information they need

Google was built on the premise that information can be a powerful thing for people around the world. We’re determined to keep doing our part to help people everywhere find what they’re looking for and give them the context they need to make informed decisions about what they see online.

Source: Search


New ways we’re helping you find high-quality information

People turn to Google every day for information in the moments that matter most. Sometimes that’s to look for the best recipe for dinner, other times it’s to check the facts about a claim they heard about from a friend.

No matter what you’re searching for, we aim to connect you with high-quality information, and help you understand and evaluate that information. We have deeply invested in both information quality and information literacy on Google Search and News, and today we have a few new developments about this important work.

Our latest quality improvements to featured snippets

We design our ranking systems to surface relevant information from the most reliable sources available – sources that demonstrate expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness. We train our systems to identify and prioritize these signals of reliability. And we’re constantly refining these systems — we make thousands of improvements every year to help people get high-quality information quickly.

Today we’re announcing one such improvement: a significant innovation to improve the quality of featured snippets. Featured snippets are the descriptive box at the top of the page that prominently highlights a piece of information from a result and the source, in response to your query. They’re helpful both for people searching on Google, and for web publishers, as featured snippets drive traffic to sites.

By using our latest AI model, Multitask Unified Model (MUM), our systems can now understand the notion of consensus, which is when multiple high-quality sources on the web all agree on the same fact. Our systems can check snippet callouts (the word or words called out above the featured snippet in a larger font) against other high-quality sources on the web, to see if there’s a general consensus for that callout, even if sources use different words or concepts to describe the same thing. We've found that this consensus-based technique has meaningfully improved the quality and helpfulness of featured snippet callouts.

A screenshot shows a query for “how long does it take for light from the sun to reach earth,” with a featured snippet highlighting a helpful article about the question and a bolded callout saying “8 and ⅓ minutes.”

With a consensus-based technique, we’re improving featured snippets.

AI models are also helping our systems understand when a featured snippet might not be the most helpful way to present information. This is particularly helpful for questions where there is no answer: for example, a recent search for “when did snoopy assassinate Abraham Lincoln” provided a snippet highlighting an accurate date and information about Lincoln’s assassination, but this clearly isn’t the most helpful way to display this result.

We’ve trained our systems to get better at detecting these sorts of false premises, which are not very common, but are cases where it’s not helpful to show a featured snippet. We’ve reduced the triggering of featured snippets in these cases by 40% with this update.

Information literacy

Beyond designing our systems to return high-quality information, we also build information literacy features in Google Search that help people evaluate information, whether they found it on social media or in conversations with family or friends. In fact, in a study this year, researchers found that people regularly use Google as a tool to validate information encountered on other platforms. We’ve invested in building a growing range of information literacy features — including Fact Check Explorer, Reverse image search, and About this result — and today, we’re announcing several updates to make these features even more helpful.

Expanding About this result to more places

About this result helps you see more context about any Search result before you ever visit a web page, just by tapping the three dots next to the result. Since launching last year, people have used About this result more than 2.4 billion times, and we’re bringing it to even more people and places - with eight more languages including Portuguese (PT), French (FR), Italian (IT), German (DE), Dutch (NL), Spanish (ES), Japanese (JP) and Indonesian (ID), coming later this year.

This week, we’re adding more context to About this result, such as how widely a source is circulated, online reviews about a source or company, whether a company is owned by another entity, or even when our systems can’t find much info about a source – all pieces of information that can provide important context.

And we’ve now launched About this page in the Google app, so you can get helpful context about websites as you’re browsing the web. Just swipe up from the navigation bar on any page to get more information about the source – helping you explore with confidence, no matter where you are online.

A gif shows the About this page feature, where someone swipes up on the navigation bar in the Google app while browsing the website for the Rainforest Alliance, and sees a panel with information about the source from across the web.

With About this page in the Google app, you can get helpful context on websites as you’re browsing.

Expanding content advisories for information gaps

Sometimes interest in a breaking news topic travels faster than facts, or there isn’t enough reliable information online about a given subject. Information literacy experts often refer to these situations as data voids. To address these, we show content advisories in situations when a topic is rapidly evolving, indicating that it might be best to check back later when more sources are available.

Now we’re expanding content advisories to searches where our systems don’t have high confidence in the overall quality of the results available for the search. This doesn’t mean that no helpful information is available, or that a particular result is low-quality. These notices provide context about the whole set of results on the page, and you can always see the results for your query, even when the advisory is present.

A gif shows a content advisory that says “It looks like there aren’t many great results for this search” along with tips like checking the source and trying new search terms.

New content advisories on searches where our systems don’t have high confidence in the overall quality of the results.

Educating people about misinformation

Beyond our products, we’re making investments into programs and partnerships to help educate people about misinformation. Since 2018, the Google News Initiative (GNI) has invested nearly $75 million in projects and partnerships working to strengthen media literacy and combat misinformation around the world.

Today, we’re announcing that Google is partnering with MediaWise at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies and PBS NewsHour Student Reporting Labs to develop information literacy lesson plans for teachers of middle and high school students. It will be available for free to teachers using PBS Learning Media and for download on Poynter’s website. We’ve partnered with MediaWise since it was founded. And today’s announcement builds on the GNI’s support of its microlearning course through text and WhatsApp called Find Facts Fast.

We also announced today the results of a survey conducted by the Poynter Institute and YouGov, with support from Google, on the ways people across generational lines verify information. You can read more in our blog post.

Helping people everywhere find the information they need

Google was built on the premise that information can be a powerful thing for people around the world. We’re determined to keep doing our part to help people everywhere find what they’re looking for and give them the context they need to make informed decisions about what they see online.

Source: Search


Survey shows how people decide what to trust online

Alex Mahadevan is director of MediaWiseat the Poynter Institute. He has taught digital media literacy to thousands of middle and high schoolers, and has trained hundreds of journalists from around the world in verification and digital investigative tools. We caught up with Alex to find out about a recent information literacy survey his organization conducted in partnership with YouGov, with support from Google. Learn moreabout how Google is working on information literacy and helping you spot misinformation online.

Why was this survey conducted?

Misinformation isn’t a new problem, but it’s becoming increasingly difficult to separate fact from fiction, especially on the internet. We wanted to learn more about how people across generational lines verify information and decide what to trust and share online. And we knew this research would help us expand on the educational resources MediaWise has to offer.

What were the parameters for the survey?

We surveyed more than 8,500 respondents of various ages in the United States, Brazil, the United Kingdom, Germany, Nigeria, India and Japan. We asked a wide range of questions aimed at assessing information literacy skills and verification habits. Those include queries about everything from the tools and techniques someone uses to investigate a post they see online, to the reasons why they may have shared misleading information in the past.

What are some of the biggest takeaways?

The survey found that 62% of respondents think they see false or misleading information on at least a weekly basis – that’s a staggering number. And people are aware that it’s a serious issue. Roughly 50% of all Gen X, Millennial and Gen Z respondents (these are people ages 18 to 57) said they’re concerned about their family being exposed to it.

Infographic says that 62% of respondents think they see false or misleading information daily or weekly. Underneath, the image shows the question respondents were asked: "How often do you see what you think is false or misleading information online." The image also shows a circular diagram depicting the breakdown of responses: 35.7% daily, 26.5% weekly, 12.7% monthly, 18.1% less than monthly, and 7.0% never.

Sixty-two percent of respondents think they see false or misleading information daily or weekly.

What did the survey tell you about how people cross-check information they find online?

Gen Zers are two times more likely than the Silent Generation (people 68 or older) to use a search engine to verify information, and also two times more likely than Baby Boomers to check social media comments to verify something they’ve seen online. They’re also more likely to use advanced search techniques, like reverse image search, or to engage in lateral reading – that’s when you open multiple tabs and perform multiple searches at once — an effective technique studied by the Stanford History Education Group.

We also learned that, when deciding if something they’ve heard or read about is true, respondents across all generations agree that the most important thing is whether conclusions are supported by sources or facts. That was important for us to see: Facts matter.

Image shows text reading: Gen Z, Millennials and Gen X feel slightly more confident in identifying false or misleading information than boomers and the Silent Generation. The image also shows the question respondents were asked in the survey: How confident are you that you can identify that an image, video or post online is false or misleading.

Gen Z, Millennials and Gen X feel slightly more confident in identifying false or misleading information than boomers and the Silent Generation.

Any final thoughts?

Our findings underscore how important it is to be able to trust the information you find online, and how taking the time to check multiple sources to verify what you see or to use resources like Google Search can be helpful in making sense of a complicated digital landscape. That’s why we’re working together to educate people about information literacy. We have a long running partnership with the Google News Initiative, which has provided support for projects like Find Facts Fast – our free microlearning course which anyone can take via text message or WhatsApp to improve their digital media literacy skills — and the Spanish version, MediaWise en Español.

Today we are also announcing a new partnership with Google, Poynter Institute for Media Studies, MediaWise and PBS NewsHour’s Student Reporting Labs to develop weekly information literacy lesson plans for teachers of middle and high school students across the U.S. The lesson plans will be available for free to teachers using PBS LearningMedia and for download on Poynter’s website. We’re excited to build on our partnership to give people the skills they need to recognize misinformation when they see it and help stop its spread.

Source: Search


Survey shows how people decide what to trust online

Alex Mahadevan is director of MediaWiseat the Poynter Institute. He has taught digital media literacy to thousands of middle and high schoolers, and has trained hundreds of journalists from around the world in verification and digital investigative tools. We caught up with Alex to find out about a recent information literacy survey his organization conducted in partnership with YouGov, with support from Google. Learn moreabout how Google is working on information literacy and helping you spot misinformation online.

Why was this survey conducted?

Misinformation isn’t a new problem, but it’s becoming increasingly difficult to separate fact from fiction, especially on the internet. We wanted to learn more about how people across generational lines verify information and decide what to trust and share online. And we knew this research would help us expand on the educational resources MediaWise has to offer.

What were the parameters for the survey?

We surveyed more than 8,500 respondents of various ages in the United States, Brazil, the United Kingdom, Germany, Nigeria, India and Japan. We asked a wide range of questions aimed at assessing information literacy skills and verification habits. Those include queries about everything from the tools and techniques someone uses to investigate a post they see online, to the reasons why they may have shared misleading information in the past.

What are some of the biggest takeaways?

The survey found that 62% of respondents think they see false or misleading information on at least a weekly basis – that’s a staggering number. And people are aware that it’s a serious issue. Roughly 50% of all Gen X, Millennial and Gen Z respondents (these are people ages 18 to 57) said they’re concerned about their family being exposed to it.

Infographic says that 62% of respondents think they see false or misleading information daily or weekly. Underneath, the image shows the question respondents were asked: "How often do you see what you think is false or misleading information online." The image also shows a circular diagram depicting the breakdown of responses: 35.7% daily, 26.5% weekly, 12.7% monthly, 18.1% less than monthly, and 7.0% never.

Sixty-two percent of respondents think they see false or misleading information daily or weekly.

What did the survey tell you about how people cross-check information they find online?

Gen Zers are two times more likely than the Silent Generation (people 68 or older) to use a search engine to verify information, and also two times more likely than Baby Boomers to check social media comments to verify something they’ve seen online. They’re also more likely to use advanced search techniques, like reverse image search, or to engage in lateral reading – that’s when you open multiple tabs and perform multiple searches at once — an effective technique studied by the Stanford History Education Group.

We also learned that, when deciding if something they’ve heard or read about is true, respondents across all generations agree that the most important thing is whether conclusions are supported by sources or facts. That was important for us to see: Facts matter.

Image shows text reading: Gen Z, Millennials and Gen X feel slightly more confident in identifying false or misleading information than boomers and the Silent Generation. The image also shows the question respondents were asked in the survey: How confident are you that you can identify that an image, video or post online is false or misleading.

Gen Z, Millennials and Gen X feel slightly more confident in identifying false or misleading information than boomers and the Silent Generation.

Any final thoughts?

Our findings underscore how important it is to be able to trust the information you find online, and how taking the time to check multiple sources to verify what you see or to use resources like Google Search can be helpful in making sense of a complicated digital landscape. That’s why we’re working together to educate people about information literacy. We have a long running partnership with the Google News Initiative, which has provided support for projects like Find Facts Fast – our free microlearning course which anyone can take via text message or WhatsApp to improve their digital media literacy skills — and the Spanish version, MediaWise en Español.

Today we are also announcing a new partnership with Google, Poynter Institute for Media Studies, MediaWise and PBS NewsHour’s Student Reporting Labs to develop weekly information literacy lesson plans for teachers of middle and high school students across the U.S. The lesson plans will be available for free to teachers using PBS LearningMedia and for download on Poynter’s website. We’re excited to build on our partnership to give people the skills they need to recognize misinformation when they see it and help stop its spread.

Source: Search