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Updated: 3 weeks 1 day ago
This week in search 2/14/10
This is part of a regular series of posts on search experience updates that runs weekly. Look for the label This week in search and subscribe to the series. - Ed.
From enhancements in real-time search to Vancouver happenings at your fingertips, this week included a number of exciting search launches:
Winter Games info in search results
As the 2010 Winter Games kick off, we've made it easy for you to follow all of the action in Vancouver. Now, when you search for the latest results for your favorite sport, you'll see the information you're looking for just above the search results. Looking for the latest schedules? They're just a search away. And if you're interested in following how your home country is doing, you can quickly view the latest medal count. All that's left for you to do is cheer for your favorite team and enjoy the games!
Example searches: [men's hockey], [alpine skiing schedule] and [medal count]
Google Buzz in real-time search
Tuesday, we announced Google Buzz as part of our efforts to help make the web more social. Buzz is a new way to start conversations about the things you find interesting, allowing you to share updates, photos and videos right in Gmail. When we launched Buzz we made sure that we had it integrated into real-time search. Since real-time is all about searching what's happening right now, including changes to webpages, the latest news articles, new blog posts and fresh microblog content, it only seemed natural to include Buzz.
Maps of more countries in search results
Many of us use online maps so frequently that it's easy to forget that many countries lack detailed, street-level digital maps. But thanks to people adding their local knowledge to Google Map Maker, the local search results for places like Romania, Iceland, and Peru now include a map. In fact, as of this week we're able to show a map everytime we show local search results. As a result, the efforts of global citizen cartographers are really serving the needs of local users, schools, city planners, and tourists.
Example search: [catedral de lima]
Aardvark acquisition
This week, you might have seen our announcement that we've acquired the technology company Aardvark. Aardvark allows you to easily tap into the knowledge and experience network of your friends and extended network of contacts. The way it works is quite simple — you just send a question in plain English, like you would when speaking with a friend. Aardvark then acts as a hub, figuring out who might be able to answer your question, and then responds with an answer. You can read more about the announcement here, and Aardvark is already available in Google Labs, so you can try it out today.
It was a busy week for us in search. See you back here next week!
Posted by Amit Singhal, Google Fellow
From enhancements in real-time search to Vancouver happenings at your fingertips, this week included a number of exciting search launches:
Winter Games info in search results
As the 2010 Winter Games kick off, we've made it easy for you to follow all of the action in Vancouver. Now, when you search for the latest results for your favorite sport, you'll see the information you're looking for just above the search results. Looking for the latest schedules? They're just a search away. And if you're interested in following how your home country is doing, you can quickly view the latest medal count. All that's left for you to do is cheer for your favorite team and enjoy the games!
Example searches: [men's hockey], [alpine skiing schedule] and [medal count]
Google Buzz in real-time search
Tuesday, we announced Google Buzz as part of our efforts to help make the web more social. Buzz is a new way to start conversations about the things you find interesting, allowing you to share updates, photos and videos right in Gmail. When we launched Buzz we made sure that we had it integrated into real-time search. Since real-time is all about searching what's happening right now, including changes to webpages, the latest news articles, new blog posts and fresh microblog content, it only seemed natural to include Buzz.
Maps of more countries in search results
Many of us use online maps so frequently that it's easy to forget that many countries lack detailed, street-level digital maps. But thanks to people adding their local knowledge to Google Map Maker, the local search results for places like Romania, Iceland, and Peru now include a map. In fact, as of this week we're able to show a map everytime we show local search results. As a result, the efforts of global citizen cartographers are really serving the needs of local users, schools, city planners, and tourists.
Example search: [catedral de lima]
Aardvark acquisition
This week, you might have seen our announcement that we've acquired the technology company Aardvark. Aardvark allows you to easily tap into the knowledge and experience network of your friends and extended network of contacts. The way it works is quite simple — you just send a question in plain English, like you would when speaking with a friend. Aardvark then acts as a hub, figuring out who might be able to answer your question, and then responds with an answer. You can read more about the announcement here, and Aardvark is already available in Google Labs, so you can try it out today.
It was a busy week for us in search. See you back here next week!
Posted by Amit Singhal, Google Fellow
Categories: Others
Google acquires Aardvark
When you need an answer to a very specific question, sometimes the information just isn't online in one simple place. For example, let's say you want to know if there's snow on Skyline Boulevard on a given day or the best time of year to plant beans in the Bay Area. You might find weather reports and planting guides on many different sites, but for these kinds of questions, a person with the right expertise can be a lot more useful than a webpage.
That's why we're excited to announce that we've acquired Aardvark, a unique technology company that lets you quickly and easily tap into the knowledge and experience of your friends and extended network of contacts. Aardvark analyzes questions to determine what they're about and then matches each question to people with relevant knowledge and interests to give you an answer quickly.
We're very impressed with the Aardvark team and the technology they've worked hard to build, and we're looking forward to collaborating to see where we can take it. You can learn more about Aardvark's underlying technology and premise by reading this paper recently co-authored by founder Damon Horowitz.
In the meantime, Aardvark is available today in Google Labs, so give it try!
Posted by Johanna Wright, Director of Product Management, Search
That's why we're excited to announce that we've acquired Aardvark, a unique technology company that lets you quickly and easily tap into the knowledge and experience of your friends and extended network of contacts. Aardvark analyzes questions to determine what they're about and then matches each question to people with relevant knowledge and interests to give you an answer quickly.
We're very impressed with the Aardvark team and the technology they've worked hard to build, and we're looking forward to collaborating to see where we can take it. You can learn more about Aardvark's underlying technology and premise by reading this paper recently co-authored by founder Damon Horowitz.
In the meantime, Aardvark is available today in Google Labs, so give it try!
Posted by Johanna Wright, Director of Product Management, Search
Categories: Others
Simple wedding planning with Google Docs
(Cross posted on the Google Docs Blog)
We all want important life moments — like graduating from school, getting married or having your first baby — to be perfect. For many couples, your wedding is a chance to celebrate with everyone you care about; it's also the largest, most complicated party you'll ever host. From tracking guest RSVPs, to picking the right florist, DJ and caterer, to coordinating every last detail with your wedding party, it's no surprise that the process can become overwhelming and expensive.
After proposing to the woman of my dreams with 100 red roses, six months ago I started planning my own wedding. My fiancee and I decided to use Google Docs to manage every aspect of our wedding, starting with shared budget, guest list, to-do list and venue-tracking spreadsheets and keeping all our docs in our "Wedding" shared folder. I ended up talking to other couples who planned their weddings using Google Docs and discovered I wasn't alone in thinking that it helped save time and avoid headaches.
Today, I'm happy to share this knowledge in the form of over 20 wedding templates available in the Google Docs template gallery. These tools make it easy to estimate and track your wedding budget, collect addresses for invitations, compare vendors and much more. For example, take a look at the address book template below. Instead of emailing hundreds of guests and copy/pasting hundreds of addresses into a spreadsheet, you can send a Google form and collect addresses in a spreadsheet automatically:
Because these documents, spreadsheets and forms live online in the cloud, you can easily get help by sharing them with your parents or bridal party, and you can access them from the bakery, bridal shop or anywhere around town using your smartphone. Plus, you never have to worry about versions and email attachments, because everything is always up to date.
Having the tools to plan a wedding is a good start, but you also need to know what questions to ask when interviewing vendors and which factors to consider when inviting guests or choosing music. To give you a leg up, we've teamed up with StyleMePretty.com, a popular wedding blog, to add tips from wedding experts to each template. StyleMePretty is also hosting a sweepstakes and asking engaged couples to share their wedding planning experiences. One randomly selected winner will receive free consultation with celebrity event planner Michelle Rago and a $500 gift certificate to Wedding Paper Divas.
We're excited to give more engaged couples tools to make the wedding planning process easier and more fun. To learn more about simplifying wedding planning with Google Docs and Style Me Pretty, check out docs.google.com/wedding.
Posted by Peter Harbison, Product Marketing Manager, Google Docs
We all want important life moments — like graduating from school, getting married or having your first baby — to be perfect. For many couples, your wedding is a chance to celebrate with everyone you care about; it's also the largest, most complicated party you'll ever host. From tracking guest RSVPs, to picking the right florist, DJ and caterer, to coordinating every last detail with your wedding party, it's no surprise that the process can become overwhelming and expensive.
After proposing to the woman of my dreams with 100 red roses, six months ago I started planning my own wedding. My fiancee and I decided to use Google Docs to manage every aspect of our wedding, starting with shared budget, guest list, to-do list and venue-tracking spreadsheets and keeping all our docs in our "Wedding" shared folder. I ended up talking to other couples who planned their weddings using Google Docs and discovered I wasn't alone in thinking that it helped save time and avoid headaches.
Today, I'm happy to share this knowledge in the form of over 20 wedding templates available in the Google Docs template gallery. These tools make it easy to estimate and track your wedding budget, collect addresses for invitations, compare vendors and much more. For example, take a look at the address book template below. Instead of emailing hundreds of guests and copy/pasting hundreds of addresses into a spreadsheet, you can send a Google form and collect addresses in a spreadsheet automatically:
Because these documents, spreadsheets and forms live online in the cloud, you can easily get help by sharing them with your parents or bridal party, and you can access them from the bakery, bridal shop or anywhere around town using your smartphone. Plus, you never have to worry about versions and email attachments, because everything is always up to date.
Having the tools to plan a wedding is a good start, but you also need to know what questions to ask when interviewing vendors and which factors to consider when inviting guests or choosing music. To give you a leg up, we've teamed up with StyleMePretty.com, a popular wedding blog, to add tips from wedding experts to each template. StyleMePretty is also hosting a sweepstakes and asking engaged couples to share their wedding planning experiences. One randomly selected winner will receive free consultation with celebrity event planner Michelle Rago and a $500 gift certificate to Wedding Paper Divas.
We're excited to give more engaged couples tools to make the wedding planning process easier and more fun. To learn more about simplifying wedding planning with Google Docs and Style Me Pretty, check out docs.google.com/wedding.
Posted by Peter Harbison, Product Marketing Manager, Google Docs
Categories: Others
Bringing extensions to Google Chrome for Mac
As thousands of Mac fans and developers gather in San Francisco for this week's Macworld conference, we're particularly delighted to announce a new beta release of Chrome for Mac. Today's release includes some of our most requested features from the Mac community, including extensions and bookmark sync.
You can read more about these features on the Google Chrome blog, or you can try it out directly by downloading the Google Chrome Beta for Mac. If you're already using Chrome, you should be automatically updated to the new beta within the next day.
Downloading Google Chrome will give your mouse pointer a new reason to get excited:
Posted by Mark Mentovai, Software Engineer, Google Chrome
You can read more about these features on the Google Chrome blog, or you can try it out directly by downloading the Google Chrome Beta for Mac. If you're already using Chrome, you should be automatically updated to the new beta within the next day.
Downloading Google Chrome will give your mouse pointer a new reason to get excited:
Posted by Mark Mentovai, Software Engineer, Google Chrome
Categories: Others
Vancouver forecast: light winds, unlimited visibility
The view from Whistler Mountain is something everyone should see: a range of rugged mountains, trails of snow, fir trees and placid lakes below. It's changed since I lived there some years back — there are many more houses, and far better chairlifts — but what remains is the rare feeling of being free, in nature, about to tear into peak snow.
In time for the Games in Vancouver and Whistler, we're thrilled to be bringing this view to the world through Street View on Google Maps. How were we able to gather imagery at 7,000 feet (2,000 meters)? The Street View team's constant experimenting yielded a snowmobile decked out with cameras to capture slope-level imagery of several runs on Whistler Blackcomb Mountains. The view from the top of 7th Heaven chairlift on Blackcomb and from the peak of Whistler are among my favourites, as are the top of the Dave Murray downhill, where the men's alpine skiing events will start, and the Peak 2 Peak gondola. (That's Whistler's new feat of engineering which takes skiers and riders from Whistler to Blackcomb.) With the Street View trike, we've also covered Whistler Village and Whistler Creekside at the mountains' bases. There's more about the snowmobile's journey and this imagery on the Google Lat Long Blog.
This imagery and many other tools are now ready to ride on our new website with information about the Games, available in 40 languages. We've combined up-to-date medal counts, news, event results and event schedules with rich visuals: 3D models and Street View imagery of the competition venues, plus new aerial imagery of the Vancouver-Whistler area. It's all in an iGoogle gadget, too. The site also connects you with real-time search results for the Games, local experts' Favourite Places and a special Picasa Web Albums gallery of featured photos from Vancouver — some submitted by users and others from Google News. Whether you're celebrating at home or in Vancouver, simply add a "wintergames2010" tag to your own photos in Picasa Web Albums, or use "wintergames2010" as the email subject if you're uploading from your mobile phone, and we'll feature the best ones.
As an extra treat for enthusiasts, check out the Google homepage from February 12 to 28 for a special doodle each day celebrating the Games. You can also get the most up-to-date medal counts, event results and schedules by doing a simple Google search. I'll be following [men's hockey] myself, and rooting for Team Canada.
Posted by Jonathan Lister, Managing Director and Head of Google Canada
In time for the Games in Vancouver and Whistler, we're thrilled to be bringing this view to the world through Street View on Google Maps. How were we able to gather imagery at 7,000 feet (2,000 meters)? The Street View team's constant experimenting yielded a snowmobile decked out with cameras to capture slope-level imagery of several runs on Whistler Blackcomb Mountains. The view from the top of 7th Heaven chairlift on Blackcomb and from the peak of Whistler are among my favourites, as are the top of the Dave Murray downhill, where the men's alpine skiing events will start, and the Peak 2 Peak gondola. (That's Whistler's new feat of engineering which takes skiers and riders from Whistler to Blackcomb.) With the Street View trike, we've also covered Whistler Village and Whistler Creekside at the mountains' bases. There's more about the snowmobile's journey and this imagery on the Google Lat Long Blog.
This imagery and many other tools are now ready to ride on our new website with information about the Games, available in 40 languages. We've combined up-to-date medal counts, news, event results and event schedules with rich visuals: 3D models and Street View imagery of the competition venues, plus new aerial imagery of the Vancouver-Whistler area. It's all in an iGoogle gadget, too. The site also connects you with real-time search results for the Games, local experts' Favourite Places and a special Picasa Web Albums gallery of featured photos from Vancouver — some submitted by users and others from Google News. Whether you're celebrating at home or in Vancouver, simply add a "wintergames2010" tag to your own photos in Picasa Web Albums, or use "wintergames2010" as the email subject if you're uploading from your mobile phone, and we'll feature the best ones.
As an extra treat for enthusiasts, check out the Google homepage from February 12 to 28 for a special doodle each day celebrating the Games. You can also get the most up-to-date medal counts, event results and schedules by doing a simple Google search. I'll be following [men's hockey] myself, and rooting for Team Canada.
Posted by Jonathan Lister, Managing Director and Head of Google Canada
Categories: Others
Introducing Google Buzz
We've blogged before about our thoughts on the social web, steps we've taken to add social features to our products, and efforts like OpenSocial that propose common tools for building social apps. With more and more communication happening online, the social web has exploded as the primary way to share interesting stuff, tell the world what you're up to in real-time and stay more connected to more people. In today's world of status messages, tweets and update streams, it's increasingly tough to sort through it all, much less engage in meaningful conversations.
Our belief is that organizing the social information on the web — finding relevance in the noise — has become a large-scale challenge, one that Google's experience in organizing information can help solve. We've recently launched innovations like real-time search and Social Search, and today we're taking another big step with the introduction of a new product, Google Buzz.
Google Buzz is a new way to start conversations about the things you find interesting. It's built right into Gmail, so you don't have to peck out an entirely new set of friends from scratch — it just works. If you think about it, there's always been a big social network underlying Gmail. Buzz brings this network to the surface by automatically setting you up to follow the people you email and chat with the most. We focused on building an easy-to-use sharing experience that richly integrates photos, videos and links, and makes it easy to share publicly or privately (so you don't have to use different tools to share with different audiences). Plus, Buzz integrates tightly with your existing Gmail inbox, so you're sure to see the stuff that matters most as it happens in real time.
We're rolling out Buzz to all Gmail accounts over the next few days, so if you don't see it in your account yet, check back soon. We also plan to make Google Buzz available to businesses and schools using Google Apps, with added features for sharing within organizations.
On your phone, Google Buzz is much more than just a small screen version of the desktop experience. Mobile devices add an important component to sharing: location. Posts tagged with geographical information have an extra dimension of context — the answer to the question "where were you when you shared this?" can communicate so much. And when viewed in aggregate, the posts about a particular location can paint an extremely rich picture of that place. Check out the Mobile Blog for more info about all of the ways to use Buzz on your phone, from a new mobile web app to a Buzz layer in Google Maps for mobile.
We've relied on other services' openness in order to build Buzz (you can connect Flickr and Twitter from Buzz in Gmail), and Buzz itself is not designed to be a closed system. Our goal is to make Buzz a fully open and distributed platform for conversations. We're building on a suite of open protocols to create a complete read/write developer API, and we invite developers to join us on Google Code to see what is available today and to learn more about how to participate.
We really hope you enjoy the experiences we've built within Gmail and for mobile phones. If you want to learn more, visit buzz.google.com. We look forward to continuing to evolve and improve Google Buzz based on your feedback.
Update on 2/10: The video from yesterday's Google Buzz launch event is now available:
Posted by Todd Jackson, Product Manager, Gmail and Google Buzz
Our belief is that organizing the social information on the web — finding relevance in the noise — has become a large-scale challenge, one that Google's experience in organizing information can help solve. We've recently launched innovations like real-time search and Social Search, and today we're taking another big step with the introduction of a new product, Google Buzz.
Google Buzz is a new way to start conversations about the things you find interesting. It's built right into Gmail, so you don't have to peck out an entirely new set of friends from scratch — it just works. If you think about it, there's always been a big social network underlying Gmail. Buzz brings this network to the surface by automatically setting you up to follow the people you email and chat with the most. We focused on building an easy-to-use sharing experience that richly integrates photos, videos and links, and makes it easy to share publicly or privately (so you don't have to use different tools to share with different audiences). Plus, Buzz integrates tightly with your existing Gmail inbox, so you're sure to see the stuff that matters most as it happens in real time.
We're rolling out Buzz to all Gmail accounts over the next few days, so if you don't see it in your account yet, check back soon. We also plan to make Google Buzz available to businesses and schools using Google Apps, with added features for sharing within organizations.
On your phone, Google Buzz is much more than just a small screen version of the desktop experience. Mobile devices add an important component to sharing: location. Posts tagged with geographical information have an extra dimension of context — the answer to the question "where were you when you shared this?" can communicate so much. And when viewed in aggregate, the posts about a particular location can paint an extremely rich picture of that place. Check out the Mobile Blog for more info about all of the ways to use Buzz on your phone, from a new mobile web app to a Buzz layer in Google Maps for mobile.
We've relied on other services' openness in order to build Buzz (you can connect Flickr and Twitter from Buzz in Gmail), and Buzz itself is not designed to be a closed system. Our goal is to make Buzz a fully open and distributed platform for conversations. We're building on a suite of open protocols to create a complete read/write developer API, and we invite developers to join us on Google Code to see what is available today and to learn more about how to participate.
We really hope you enjoy the experiences we've built within Gmail and for mobile phones. If you want to learn more, visit buzz.google.com. We look forward to continuing to evolve and improve Google Buzz based on your feedback.
Update on 2/10: The video from yesterday's Google Buzz launch event is now available:
Posted by Todd Jackson, Product Manager, Gmail and Google Buzz
Categories: Others
Think big with a gig: Our experimental fiber network
Imagine sitting in a rural health clinic, streaming three-dimensional medical imaging over the web and discussing a unique condition with a specialist in New York. Or downloading a high-definition, full-length feature film in less than five minutes. Or collaborating with classmates around the world while watching live 3-D video of a university lecture. Universal, ultra high-speed Internet access will make all this and more possible. We've urged the FCC to look at new and creative ways to get there in its National Broadband Plan – and today we're announcing an experiment of our own.
We're planning to build and test ultra high-speed broadband networks in a small number of trial locations across the United States. We'll deliver Internet speeds more than 100 times faster than what most Americans have access to today with 1 gigabit per second, fiber-to-the-home connections. We plan to offer service at a competitive price to at least 50,000 and potentially up to 500,000 people.
Our goal is to experiment with new ways to help make Internet access better and faster for everyone. Here are some specific things that we have in mind:
As a first step, today we're putting out a request for information (RFI) to help identify interested communities. We welcome responses from local government, as well as members of the public. If you'd like to respond, visit this page to learn more, or check out our video:
We'll collect responses until March 26, and will announce our target communities later this year. Stay tuned.
Posted by Minnie Ingersoll and James Kelly, Product Managers
We're planning to build and test ultra high-speed broadband networks in a small number of trial locations across the United States. We'll deliver Internet speeds more than 100 times faster than what most Americans have access to today with 1 gigabit per second, fiber-to-the-home connections. We plan to offer service at a competitive price to at least 50,000 and potentially up to 500,000 people.
Our goal is to experiment with new ways to help make Internet access better and faster for everyone. Here are some specific things that we have in mind:
- Next generation apps: We want to see what developers and users can do with ultra high-speeds, whether it's creating new bandwidth-intensive "killer apps" and services, or other uses we can't yet imagine.
- New deployment techniques: We'll test new ways to build fiber networks, and to help inform and support deployments elsewhere, we'll share key lessons learned with the world.
- Openness and choice: We'll operate an "open access" network, giving users the choice of multiple service providers. And consistent with our past advocacy, we'll manage our network in an open, non-discriminatory and transparent way.
As a first step, today we're putting out a request for information (RFI) to help identify interested communities. We welcome responses from local government, as well as members of the public. If you'd like to respond, visit this page to learn more, or check out our video:
We'll collect responses until March 26, and will announce our target communities later this year. Stay tuned.
Posted by Minnie Ingersoll and James Kelly, Product Managers
Categories: Others
Safety Mode: giving you more control on YouTube
(Cross-posted from the YouTube Blog)
Diversity of content is one of the great things about YouTube. But we know that some of you want a more controlled experience. That's why we're announcing Safety Mode, an opt-in setting that helps screen out potentially objectionable content that you may prefer not to see or don't want others in your family to stumble across while enjoying YouTube. An example of this type of content might be a newsworthy video that contains graphic violence such as a political protest or war coverage. While no filter is 100% perfect, Safety Mode is another step in our ongoing desire to give you greater control over the content you see on the site.
It's easy to opt in to Safety Mode: Just click on the link at the bottom of any video page. You can even lock your choice on that browser with your YouTube password. To learn more, check out the video below.
And remember, ALL content must still comply with our Community Guidelines. Safety Mode isn't fool proof, but it provides a greater degree of control over your YouTube experience. Safety Mode is rolling out to all users through out the day, watch for the new link at the bottom of any YouTube page.
Posted by Jamie Davidson, Associate Product Manager
Diversity of content is one of the great things about YouTube. But we know that some of you want a more controlled experience. That's why we're announcing Safety Mode, an opt-in setting that helps screen out potentially objectionable content that you may prefer not to see or don't want others in your family to stumble across while enjoying YouTube. An example of this type of content might be a newsworthy video that contains graphic violence such as a political protest or war coverage. While no filter is 100% perfect, Safety Mode is another step in our ongoing desire to give you greater control over the content you see on the site.
It's easy to opt in to Safety Mode: Just click on the link at the bottom of any video page. You can even lock your choice on that browser with your YouTube password. To learn more, check out the video below.
And remember, ALL content must still comply with our Community Guidelines. Safety Mode isn't fool proof, but it provides a greater degree of control over your YouTube experience. Safety Mode is rolling out to all users through out the day, watch for the new link at the bottom of any YouTube page.
Posted by Jamie Davidson, Associate Product Manager
Categories: Others
2010 Super Bowl: Some search touchdowns
While 106 American football players sought yardage in the 2010 Super Bowl, millions of people sought information related to the big game from Google search. We looked at some game-day search trends and data* to see what football fans were searching for this year.
Most searched-for team
To the victor of this year's big game went the search spoils: The New Orleans Saints captured both the NFL championship and the lion's share of Super Bowl team searches in 2010.
Most searched-for player
For leading the New Orleans Saints to their 31–17 win over the Indianapolis Colts — with 288 yards, two touchdowns and 32 of 39 passes completed — quarterback Drew Brees won the Most Valuable Player award. But Peyton Manning earned the status of the Super Bowl's most searched-for player, beating out some tough competition and followed by Drew Brees, Reggie Bush, Hank Baskett and Scott Fujita.
Many fans of Reggie Bush also expressed interest in his girlfriend Kim Kardashian; searches for her name, both on its own and linked with Reggie Bush's, spiked significantly during the game. Additionally, search volume for football great Walter Payton — after whom the Walter Payton Man of the Year Award was named — was as high as that for some of the game's top five most searched-for players.
Most searched-for coach
Behind every team is a great coach, and behind every coach is an engaged online community. This year, Sean Payton, who has coached the New Orleans Saints since 2006, was the most searched-for team leader.
Most searched-for party planning terms
Die-hard football fans and casual shindig hosts alike look forward to game day for its party planning possibilities. This year, people went online to find all the information they needed to watch the game and to make sure they were well-fed during the same. Some top rising recipe searches on game day included buffalo chicken dip, guacamole, 7-layer dip and pigs in a blanket.
People were also looking for information on how and when to watch the game; searches related to the start time of the game and watch Super Bowl 2010 online were both notably high.
Most searched-for advertisers
In addition to spotlighting some of the finest football teams in the U.S., the Super Bowl is a showcase for some of the funniest, coolest and most interesting creative advertisements each year. This year, the prospect of "free" dominated the searched-for ads. The offer of free pants from Dockers garnered a spike of queries which continued throughout the game. Twice, Denny's advertised free grand slam breakfasts, leading to two bumps in searches for Denny's free breakfast, Denny's locations and Denny's.
Searchers also enjoyed ads featuring celebrities — including Betty White, who played football and ate Snickers bars, and Megan Fox, who used a Motorola smartphone.
We told the story of an American who finds love in Paris — using search queries. Google Super Bowl commercial led searchers to the love story of a man who dutifully searched for information on how to impress a French girl, long distance relationship advice and how to assemble a crib. (Full disclosure: We work for this advertiser.)
Stay tuned
Which advertiser won the position of Favorite 2010 Super Bowl Ad, according to fans? Check out YouTube's Ad Blitz results on February 17 to see which Super Bowl ad received the greatest number of positive votes from the YouTube community. Until then, you can use Google Trends to see more Super Bowl-related queries.
*We used internal tools to quickly gather this data. All of the search queries we looked at were anonymous — no personal information was used.
Posted by Jeffrey Oldham, Software Engineer
Most searched-for team
To the victor of this year's big game went the search spoils: The New Orleans Saints captured both the NFL championship and the lion's share of Super Bowl team searches in 2010.
Most searched-for player
For leading the New Orleans Saints to their 31–17 win over the Indianapolis Colts — with 288 yards, two touchdowns and 32 of 39 passes completed — quarterback Drew Brees won the Most Valuable Player award. But Peyton Manning earned the status of the Super Bowl's most searched-for player, beating out some tough competition and followed by Drew Brees, Reggie Bush, Hank Baskett and Scott Fujita.
Many fans of Reggie Bush also expressed interest in his girlfriend Kim Kardashian; searches for her name, both on its own and linked with Reggie Bush's, spiked significantly during the game. Additionally, search volume for football great Walter Payton — after whom the Walter Payton Man of the Year Award was named — was as high as that for some of the game's top five most searched-for players.
Most searched-for coach
Behind every team is a great coach, and behind every coach is an engaged online community. This year, Sean Payton, who has coached the New Orleans Saints since 2006, was the most searched-for team leader.
Most searched-for party planning terms
Die-hard football fans and casual shindig hosts alike look forward to game day for its party planning possibilities. This year, people went online to find all the information they needed to watch the game and to make sure they were well-fed during the same. Some top rising recipe searches on game day included buffalo chicken dip, guacamole, 7-layer dip and pigs in a blanket.
People were also looking for information on how and when to watch the game; searches related to the start time of the game and watch Super Bowl 2010 online were both notably high.
Most searched-for advertisers
In addition to spotlighting some of the finest football teams in the U.S., the Super Bowl is a showcase for some of the funniest, coolest and most interesting creative advertisements each year. This year, the prospect of "free" dominated the searched-for ads. The offer of free pants from Dockers garnered a spike of queries which continued throughout the game. Twice, Denny's advertised free grand slam breakfasts, leading to two bumps in searches for Denny's free breakfast, Denny's locations and Denny's.
Searchers also enjoyed ads featuring celebrities — including Betty White, who played football and ate Snickers bars, and Megan Fox, who used a Motorola smartphone.
We told the story of an American who finds love in Paris — using search queries. Google Super Bowl commercial led searchers to the love story of a man who dutifully searched for information on how to impress a French girl, long distance relationship advice and how to assemble a crib. (Full disclosure: We work for this advertiser.)
Stay tuned
Which advertiser won the position of Favorite 2010 Super Bowl Ad, according to fans? Check out YouTube's Ad Blitz results on February 17 to see which Super Bowl ad received the greatest number of positive votes from the YouTube community. Until then, you can use Google Trends to see more Super Bowl-related queries.
*We used internal tools to quickly gather this data. All of the search queries we looked at were anonymous — no personal information was used.
Posted by Jeffrey Oldham, Software Engineer
Categories: Others
Our approach to maximizing advertising revenue for online publishers
All website owners need to pay for the costs of creating content and making it available online. Whether delivering entertainment, products, news, services, social networking or opinions, they need to pay their way by selling advertising or charging their users.
Website owners, or "online publishers," span the range from individual bloggers to multinational companies. If they sell advertising, they can do this directly themselves, via their own sales force. Alternatively, they can use an ad network to place ads on the pages of their website. Many publishers use a combination of these methods if they can't sell all their ad space themselves (for example, a publisher may have an unpredicted surge in traffic — and therefore ad space — resulting from a popular post, or from a major website linking to them).
We have a long history of helping online publishers make money from their websites. We wanted to update you on our continuing work in this area, and how Google’s newer products can provide real and significant results for clients.
We currently have three main products that work together to help online publishers of all sizes and types maximize their revenue.
AdSense
AdSense, launched in 2003, places highly relevant ads on our partners' websites, who share in the ad revenue. In 2009, our AdSense partners, comprising over a million large and small publishers, earned over $5.2 billion through AdSense.
AdSense is designed to help online publishers get the most revenue possible for their ad space, without having to directly manage advertiser relationships. When a publisher enables AdSense on their site, Google automatically maximizes the publisher's revenues every time a page loads. It does this in real time, by selecting the most valuable ad from AdWords advertisers and a large pool of other competing ad networks and buyers.
Ad serving
Larger publishers with their own ad sales teams use our ad serving products (like DoubleClick's DFP or Google Ad Manager) to serve the most valuable ad that they've sold directly to advertisers or ad agencies. DFP is the industry's leading ad serving platform that powers the advertising businesses of the largest online publishers, while Google Ad Manager is designed to meet the needs of growing online publishers.
Our ad serving products are a key focus for us and we're continuing to make significant investments in this area. You can read about some of our DFP customers here and some of our Google Ad Manager customers here.
DoubleClick Ad Exchange
DoubleClick Ad Exchange is a real-time auction marketplace for display ad space — it includes ad networks on one side, and major online publishers on the other. Publishers are in complete control of which networks they allow to bid, what ads can appear on their sites and which ad space they make available.
Maximizing revenue across various ad networks is sometimes called "yield management." For major online publishers, the Ad Exchange offers an easy-to-use yield management solution — it selects the highest paying ad from across multiple, competing ad networks, in real time. However, the Ad Exchange goes further than simple "yield management" to provide a more complete revenue maximization solution.
Through a unique process called "dynamic allocation," it also compares — again, in real time — the value of the highest-paying ad in the Ad Exchange with any ads that the publisher has entered into their ad server (such as ad network deals) and chooses the highest paying one. By definition, the Ad Exchange only serves ads when it can offer a higher price for ad space. In fact, analysis shows that the average price a publisher receives for ad space sold through the Ad Exchange is over 130% higher than the average price of ad space sold directly to ad networks and other third parties. (Of course, while similar, the ad space being compared is not identical.)
A continuing effort
Today's online publishers, large and small, operate in a complicated and fragmented advertising environment. We're focused on developing a full suite of technology products — such as AdSense, ad serving products and DoubleClick Ad Exchange — that can maximize all publishers' advertising revenues. We're also working to bring new advertisers to online advertising and make the process easier for them, to grow the advertising pie for everyone.
By doing this, we hope to help all publishers fund their websites, which enables them to create a wide variety of online content for all Internet users.
If you're interested in the ins-and-outs of our approach to maximizing revenue for publishers, you can read more in this document.
Posted by Neal Mohan, Vice President of Product Management
Website owners, or "online publishers," span the range from individual bloggers to multinational companies. If they sell advertising, they can do this directly themselves, via their own sales force. Alternatively, they can use an ad network to place ads on the pages of their website. Many publishers use a combination of these methods if they can't sell all their ad space themselves (for example, a publisher may have an unpredicted surge in traffic — and therefore ad space — resulting from a popular post, or from a major website linking to them).
We have a long history of helping online publishers make money from their websites. We wanted to update you on our continuing work in this area, and how Google’s newer products can provide real and significant results for clients.
We currently have three main products that work together to help online publishers of all sizes and types maximize their revenue.
AdSense
AdSense, launched in 2003, places highly relevant ads on our partners' websites, who share in the ad revenue. In 2009, our AdSense partners, comprising over a million large and small publishers, earned over $5.2 billion through AdSense.
AdSense is designed to help online publishers get the most revenue possible for their ad space, without having to directly manage advertiser relationships. When a publisher enables AdSense on their site, Google automatically maximizes the publisher's revenues every time a page loads. It does this in real time, by selecting the most valuable ad from AdWords advertisers and a large pool of other competing ad networks and buyers.
Ad serving
Larger publishers with their own ad sales teams use our ad serving products (like DoubleClick's DFP or Google Ad Manager) to serve the most valuable ad that they've sold directly to advertisers or ad agencies. DFP is the industry's leading ad serving platform that powers the advertising businesses of the largest online publishers, while Google Ad Manager is designed to meet the needs of growing online publishers.
Our ad serving products are a key focus for us and we're continuing to make significant investments in this area. You can read about some of our DFP customers here and some of our Google Ad Manager customers here.
DoubleClick Ad Exchange
DoubleClick Ad Exchange is a real-time auction marketplace for display ad space — it includes ad networks on one side, and major online publishers on the other. Publishers are in complete control of which networks they allow to bid, what ads can appear on their sites and which ad space they make available.
Maximizing revenue across various ad networks is sometimes called "yield management." For major online publishers, the Ad Exchange offers an easy-to-use yield management solution — it selects the highest paying ad from across multiple, competing ad networks, in real time. However, the Ad Exchange goes further than simple "yield management" to provide a more complete revenue maximization solution.
Through a unique process called "dynamic allocation," it also compares — again, in real time — the value of the highest-paying ad in the Ad Exchange with any ads that the publisher has entered into their ad server (such as ad network deals) and chooses the highest paying one. By definition, the Ad Exchange only serves ads when it can offer a higher price for ad space. In fact, analysis shows that the average price a publisher receives for ad space sold through the Ad Exchange is over 130% higher than the average price of ad space sold directly to ad networks and other third parties. (Of course, while similar, the ad space being compared is not identical.)
A continuing effort
Today's online publishers, large and small, operate in a complicated and fragmented advertising environment. We're focused on developing a full suite of technology products — such as AdSense, ad serving products and DoubleClick Ad Exchange — that can maximize all publishers' advertising revenues. We're also working to bring new advertisers to online advertising and make the process easier for them, to grow the advertising pie for everyone.
By doing this, we hope to help all publishers fund their websites, which enables them to create a wide variety of online content for all Internet users.
If you're interested in the ins-and-outs of our approach to maximizing revenue for publishers, you can read more in this document.
Posted by Neal Mohan, Vice President of Product Management
Categories: Others
This week in search 2/5/10
This is part of a regular series of posts on search experience updates that runs weekly. Look for the label This week in search and subscribe to the series. - Ed.
In addition to language improvements this week, we released several other new features:
Haitian Creole translation
We've now added Haitian Creole (kreyòl ayisyen) translation to Google Translate, so that you can translate between Creole and 51 other languages, and also hear spoken versions of Creole translations. While this translation system is still evolving (when translating to/from Creole, English performs better than other languages), we hope it will help relief volunteers communicate better with Haitian earthquake victims, and serve as a useful resource for people in Haiti and elsewhere. To learn more about ways you can help with Haiti relief efforts, please visit our Crisis Response page.
Example translations: [Kijan ou ye ?] and [How can I help you?]
Improvement for Arabic searches
Sometimes when people conduct a search, they forget to separate words with spaces or mistakenly repeat a letter within a word. These types of errors are much more common in languages like Arabic, where some letters are considered word breaks. In other words, if the last letter of one word is a word break, the following word may not be separated with a space. To address issues like this, we recently developed a search ranking improvement that targets certain Arabic queries. Our algorithm employs rules of Arabic spelling and grammar and signals from historical search data to indicate when to leave out spaces between words or when to remove unnecessarily repeated letters. Now, when you type a query leaving out spaces or repeating a letter, you'll see better results based not only on what you typed, but also on what our algorithm understands is the "correct" query.
Example search: [التربيةوالتعلييم] Incorrectly typed, this Arabic query may not produce a relevant search result. With our algorithm change, the query returns better results for the correct meaning: "Ministry of Education."
Doodle 4 Google
This week marks our third annual Doodle 4 Google contest in the U.S. The competition gives K-12 kids the opportunity to design their own Google logo and the winner appears on Google.com for a day so that hundreds of millions of searchers can enjoy it as well. In addition to the bragging rights, there are a number of great prizes including a college scholarship and computers for the winner's school. If you or your child are interested in getting involved, check out our announcement or visit the Doodle 4 Google contest page for entry rules.
Stars in Google News
A couple of months back, we launched the Custom Sections Directory feature in Google News, enabling you to setup and share sections on topics of interest. Now there's an even easier way to keep up to date with particular news stories. Mark a story cluster by clicking on the star next to it — just like you do with messages in Gmail and items in Google Reader. Once you've starred a story in Google News, when there are significant updates, we'll alert you by putting the headline in boldface. You can also follow your most recent starred stories in the Starred section of Google News. Learn more about this, and get starring!
Thanks for following news of our search enhancements, and stay tuned for more.
Posted by Ben Gomes, Distinguished Engineer
In addition to language improvements this week, we released several other new features:
Haitian Creole translation
We've now added Haitian Creole (kreyòl ayisyen) translation to Google Translate, so that you can translate between Creole and 51 other languages, and also hear spoken versions of Creole translations. While this translation system is still evolving (when translating to/from Creole, English performs better than other languages), we hope it will help relief volunteers communicate better with Haitian earthquake victims, and serve as a useful resource for people in Haiti and elsewhere. To learn more about ways you can help with Haiti relief efforts, please visit our Crisis Response page.
Example translations: [Kijan ou ye ?] and [How can I help you?]
Improvement for Arabic searches
Sometimes when people conduct a search, they forget to separate words with spaces or mistakenly repeat a letter within a word. These types of errors are much more common in languages like Arabic, where some letters are considered word breaks. In other words, if the last letter of one word is a word break, the following word may not be separated with a space. To address issues like this, we recently developed a search ranking improvement that targets certain Arabic queries. Our algorithm employs rules of Arabic spelling and grammar and signals from historical search data to indicate when to leave out spaces between words or when to remove unnecessarily repeated letters. Now, when you type a query leaving out spaces or repeating a letter, you'll see better results based not only on what you typed, but also on what our algorithm understands is the "correct" query.
Example search: [التربيةوالتعلييم] Incorrectly typed, this Arabic query may not produce a relevant search result. With our algorithm change, the query returns better results for the correct meaning: "Ministry of Education."
Doodle 4 Google
This week marks our third annual Doodle 4 Google contest in the U.S. The competition gives K-12 kids the opportunity to design their own Google logo and the winner appears on Google.com for a day so that hundreds of millions of searchers can enjoy it as well. In addition to the bragging rights, there are a number of great prizes including a college scholarship and computers for the winner's school. If you or your child are interested in getting involved, check out our announcement or visit the Doodle 4 Google contest page for entry rules.
Stars in Google News
A couple of months back, we launched the Custom Sections Directory feature in Google News, enabling you to setup and share sections on topics of interest. Now there's an even easier way to keep up to date with particular news stories. Mark a story cluster by clicking on the star next to it — just like you do with messages in Gmail and items in Google Reader. Once you've starred a story in Google News, when there are significant updates, we'll alert you by putting the headline in boldface. You can also follow your most recent starred stories in the Starred section of Google News. Learn more about this, and get starring!
Thanks for following news of our search enhancements, and stay tuned for more.
Posted by Ben Gomes, Distinguished Engineer
Categories: Others
Love and the Super Bowl
If you watched the Super Bowl this evening you'll have seen a video from Google called "Parisian Love". In fact you might have watched it before, because it's been on YouTube for over three months. We didn't set out to do a Super Bowl ad, or even a TV ad for search. Our goal was simply to create a series of short online videos about our products and our users, and how they interact. But we liked this video so much, and it's had such a positive reaction on YouTube, that we decided to share it with a wider audience.
If you like it too, we hope you'll watch the others. Enjoy.
Posted by Eric Schmidt, CEO
If you like it too, we hope you'll watch the others. Enjoy.
Posted by Eric Schmidt, CEO
Categories: Others
Google Apps highlights – 2/5/2010
This is part of a regular series of Google Apps updates that we post every couple of weeks. Look for the label "Google Apps highlights" and subscribe to the series. - Ed.
Developments over the last couple weeks really showcase how Google's other innovation focus areas — including Search, Mobile and Chrome — help make Google Apps even more useful.
Updates to Google Search in Gmail Labs
On Tuesday we made some helpful changes to the Google Search feature in Gmail Labs. The search gadget now runs some of Google's most popular search features, like dictionary definitions, spelling suggestions, calculations, local results, weather info and news. You don't even need to type your search query anymore; just highlight text in the compose area and click the multicolored "g" button to run a search on those terms.
Gmail Chrome extensions
Several convenient extensions for Gmail are now available to Chrome users. The "Google Mail" extension adds a small button next to Chrome's address bar that displays your unread mail count. "Send from Gmail" makes Gmail your default mail program, and opens a Gmail compose window when you click an email link on a web page. The button for this extension helps you quickly share the web page you're viewing over email.
Easier file location in Google Docs
Last week we introduced a pair of improvements to make finding files in Google Docs easier. First, we launched an option to show file thumbnails in your Documents List, which is great for quickly spotting what you're looking for. Just click the view option buttons in the toolbar to toggle between thumbnails and the standard text layout.
Also released last week: search spelling suggestions help you find the file you're looking for, even when your typing is off. The Google Docs search spell checker is powered by the same technology that helps you get better search results on google.com.
Scripts for Google Apps Standard Edition
At the end of last week we launched application scripting for Google Apps Standard Edition. (Before it was only available to businesses and schools using Premier and Education Editions.) Scripts can be triggered from spreadsheets to perform automated tasks and calculations, but scripts go far beyond spreadsheets; they can be used to fire off automated email messages, create appointments in Google Calendar and accomplish other actions across the whole Google Apps suite. We've written up a few script tutorials if you have the itch to give scripting a try.
Mobile device management
Just yesterday, Google Apps Premier and Education Edition customers got a boost in their ability to manage mobile devices synced with Google Apps. Right from the online control panel, IT admins can remotely wipe data from lost or stolen mobile phones, configure devices to lock after a period of inactivity and set password strength requirements. These new capabilities are available for iPhones, Windows Mobile devices and Nokia E-series phones. Stay tuned for similar features for Android devices.
Who's gone Google?
It's been another very active couple weeks helping more businesses and schools move to the cloud. The team is happy to welcome the latest crop of Google Apps customers, including Complinet, The Open University, Villanova University, Small World Financial Services, Tuskegee University, Clemson University and the New Zealand Post.
Saline Area Schools in Michigan has an especially impressive "gone Google" story. They're saving $400,000 in the first year, spending much less time on server administration, keeping spam at bay and fostering better collaboration among faculty.
Fairchild Semiconductor also recounted their experience switching 6,000 employees spread across 20 countries off their legacy Lotus Notes installation, selecting Google Apps and Postini over hosted email alternatives from Microsoft and IBM. Barry Driscoll, Senior Director of IT for Fairchild summed it up best: "Now we are providing our employees with a lot more functionality for a lot less money."
Hope you're enjoying the latest round of new capabilities, whether you're using Google Apps with friends and family, with work colleagues, or with classmates. For details and the latest news in this area, check out the Google Apps Blog.
Posted by Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Marketing Manager
Developments over the last couple weeks really showcase how Google's other innovation focus areas — including Search, Mobile and Chrome — help make Google Apps even more useful.
Updates to Google Search in Gmail Labs
On Tuesday we made some helpful changes to the Google Search feature in Gmail Labs. The search gadget now runs some of Google's most popular search features, like dictionary definitions, spelling suggestions, calculations, local results, weather info and news. You don't even need to type your search query anymore; just highlight text in the compose area and click the multicolored "g" button to run a search on those terms.
Gmail Chrome extensions
Several convenient extensions for Gmail are now available to Chrome users. The "Google Mail" extension adds a small button next to Chrome's address bar that displays your unread mail count. "Send from Gmail" makes Gmail your default mail program, and opens a Gmail compose window when you click an email link on a web page. The button for this extension helps you quickly share the web page you're viewing over email.
Easier file location in Google Docs
Last week we introduced a pair of improvements to make finding files in Google Docs easier. First, we launched an option to show file thumbnails in your Documents List, which is great for quickly spotting what you're looking for. Just click the view option buttons in the toolbar to toggle between thumbnails and the standard text layout.
Also released last week: search spelling suggestions help you find the file you're looking for, even when your typing is off. The Google Docs search spell checker is powered by the same technology that helps you get better search results on google.com.
Scripts for Google Apps Standard Edition
At the end of last week we launched application scripting for Google Apps Standard Edition. (Before it was only available to businesses and schools using Premier and Education Editions.) Scripts can be triggered from spreadsheets to perform automated tasks and calculations, but scripts go far beyond spreadsheets; they can be used to fire off automated email messages, create appointments in Google Calendar and accomplish other actions across the whole Google Apps suite. We've written up a few script tutorials if you have the itch to give scripting a try.
Mobile device management
Just yesterday, Google Apps Premier and Education Edition customers got a boost in their ability to manage mobile devices synced with Google Apps. Right from the online control panel, IT admins can remotely wipe data from lost or stolen mobile phones, configure devices to lock after a period of inactivity and set password strength requirements. These new capabilities are available for iPhones, Windows Mobile devices and Nokia E-series phones. Stay tuned for similar features for Android devices.
Who's gone Google?
It's been another very active couple weeks helping more businesses and schools move to the cloud. The team is happy to welcome the latest crop of Google Apps customers, including Complinet, The Open University, Villanova University, Small World Financial Services, Tuskegee University, Clemson University and the New Zealand Post.
Saline Area Schools in Michigan has an especially impressive "gone Google" story. They're saving $400,000 in the first year, spending much less time on server administration, keeping spam at bay and fostering better collaboration among faculty.
Fairchild Semiconductor also recounted their experience switching 6,000 employees spread across 20 countries off their legacy Lotus Notes installation, selecting Google Apps and Postini over hosted email alternatives from Microsoft and IBM. Barry Driscoll, Senior Director of IT for Fairchild summed it up best: "Now we are providing our employees with a lot more functionality for a lot less money."
Hope you're enjoying the latest round of new capabilities, whether you're using Google Apps with friends and family, with work colleagues, or with classmates. For details and the latest news in this area, check out the Google Apps Blog.
Posted by Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Marketing Manager
Categories: Others
Google-inspired designer collections
Each year, Vogue and the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) sponsor a Fashion Fund to support emerging designers. In 2009, each participating designer was asked to create a one-of-a-kind item inspired by Google in some way — whether through our logo's colors, technology or our commitment to equal access to information. Last October, we transformed 10 of the finalists’ designs into iGoogle Artists themes. While we loved seeing fashion meet iGoogle, we wanted to see these pieces in person — and wear them! Today, we’re debuting three of our favorite designs from this challenge. These three featured designers have customized their original designs for a broader audience, and we’re making them available to the public to purchase for a limited time. Check out this page to learn more about the items, the designers and how they were inspired by Google.
Posted by Michaela Prescott, Group Product Marketing Manager
Posted by Michaela Prescott, Group Product Marketing Manager
Categories: Others
Doodle 4 Google — Tell us what you would do if you could do anything...
Today, we're excited to announce our third annual Doodle 4 Google contest in the U.S. Google doodles, created by our talented team of doodlers, have helped us celebrate events and anniversaries from Van Gogh's birthday to Valentine's Day. And since 2008, Doodle 4 Google has given K-12 kids the opportunity to create their own logo and have it displayed on the Google homepage for hundreds of millions of users to enjoy for a day.
In addition to the winner's art appearing on Google.com on May 27, 2010, they'll also receive a $15,000 college scholarship, a laptop computer and a $25,000 technology grant for their school.
This year's theme is "If I Could Do Anything, I Would..." and it's all about pushing the limits, dreaming big, and seeing what you can accomplish in life. When coming up with inspiration for this year's contest, we turned to some of our very own Googlers, including Ed Lu, a former astronaut.
Ed typifies this year's theme in action, and shares an inspiring anecdote:
On my first mission STS-84, one of my crewmates and I were having dinner aboard the Space Shuttle Atlantis. After all our work for the day was done, we decided to eat "upside down" on the ceiling, gazing out at the Earth moving by below our feet. As we flew around the Earth, watching the continents go by, my crewmate remarked how amazingly large the Earth really is. But at that same time, it also felt small to us. There we were, flying at 18,000 miles per hour around the Earth in a machine built by humans, with a crew made up of astronauts from all over the world. Both of our observations were true at the same time. The world is indeed a big place with many challenges. But by using science, technology and the power of people working together, nearly anything is possible.
So dream big! If you could do anything, what would you do?
For even more inspiration, you can see last year's winner, Christin Engelberth, a sixth grader at Bernard Harris Middle School in San Antonio, Texas. She titled her doodle "A New Beginning" to express her wish that "out of the current crisis, discoveries will be found to help the Earth prosper once more."
We're happy to let you know that this year, we've also assembled a panel of well-known "Expert Jurors," including creative directors, cartoonists and famous animators ranging from Sesame Workshop to Pixar Animation Studios. Our Expert Jurors will help us narrow down the cream of the crop to 40 regional finalists, who will come to the Google office in New York City on May 26, 2010. For the second year, we'll also be partnering with the Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, where the top 40 regional finalists will get to have their artwork displayed in a national exhibit. And for the first time this year, we'll give out eight Technology Booster awards to schools that submit maximum number of doodles per school by March 10th and have students in our 400 State Finalists.
Please visit the official competition website for a full listing of all contest rules and requirements. Only students from registered schools can enter, so be sure your school is registered by March 17, 2010. All doodles must be submitted by March 31, 2010.
We hope you're as excited about this year's contest as we are. Good luck!
Posted by Marissa Mayer, VP Search Products & User Experience and Ed Lu, Program Manager, Advanced Projects
In addition to the winner's art appearing on Google.com on May 27, 2010, they'll also receive a $15,000 college scholarship, a laptop computer and a $25,000 technology grant for their school.
This year's theme is "If I Could Do Anything, I Would..." and it's all about pushing the limits, dreaming big, and seeing what you can accomplish in life. When coming up with inspiration for this year's contest, we turned to some of our very own Googlers, including Ed Lu, a former astronaut.
Ed typifies this year's theme in action, and shares an inspiring anecdote:
On my first mission STS-84, one of my crewmates and I were having dinner aboard the Space Shuttle Atlantis. After all our work for the day was done, we decided to eat "upside down" on the ceiling, gazing out at the Earth moving by below our feet. As we flew around the Earth, watching the continents go by, my crewmate remarked how amazingly large the Earth really is. But at that same time, it also felt small to us. There we were, flying at 18,000 miles per hour around the Earth in a machine built by humans, with a crew made up of astronauts from all over the world. Both of our observations were true at the same time. The world is indeed a big place with many challenges. But by using science, technology and the power of people working together, nearly anything is possible.
So dream big! If you could do anything, what would you do?
For even more inspiration, you can see last year's winner, Christin Engelberth, a sixth grader at Bernard Harris Middle School in San Antonio, Texas. She titled her doodle "A New Beginning" to express her wish that "out of the current crisis, discoveries will be found to help the Earth prosper once more."
We're happy to let you know that this year, we've also assembled a panel of well-known "Expert Jurors," including creative directors, cartoonists and famous animators ranging from Sesame Workshop to Pixar Animation Studios. Our Expert Jurors will help us narrow down the cream of the crop to 40 regional finalists, who will come to the Google office in New York City on May 26, 2010. For the second year, we'll also be partnering with the Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, where the top 40 regional finalists will get to have their artwork displayed in a national exhibit. And for the first time this year, we'll give out eight Technology Booster awards to schools that submit maximum number of doodles per school by March 10th and have students in our 400 State Finalists.
Please visit the official competition website for a full listing of all contest rules and requirements. Only students from registered schools can enter, so be sure your school is registered by March 17, 2010. All doodles must be submitted by March 31, 2010.
We hope you're as excited about this year's contest as we are. Good luck!
Posted by Marissa Mayer, VP Search Products & User Experience and Ed Lu, Program Manager, Advanced Projects
Categories: Others
A recent improvement for Arabic searches
This post is the latest in an ongoing series about how we harness the data we collect to improve our products and services for our users. - Ed.
We've learned that when performing a search on Google, people sometimes forget to separate words with spaces. Moreover, people often mistakenly repeat a letter within a single word. For instance, when writing the query [amazingly beautiful poem], you might write it as [amazingly beautiifullpoem].
These types of errors are much more common in languages like Arabic, where most of the letters are cursive. That means that the shapes of the letters change, based on the position of the letter in the word (initial, middle, final or isolated). Moreover, some Arabic letters are considered word breaks, meaning that the following letter must be in an "initial" shape. In other words, if the last letter of one word is a word break, the following word may not be separated with a space.
For example, the queries [وزارةالتعليم] and [وزارة التعليم] have an identical meaning (Ministry of Education) and they're both written in a common form for Arabic documents. But they have different, albeit correct, formats — the first query is written as a single word, while the second is written as two. Google needs to understand that while they're written differently, they mean the same thing and should yield the exact same search results. In this example, both queries were written correctly, just in different formats. But sometimes people just make errors — like repeating the same letter twice. For example, you might write [راائعة الجماال], repeating the letter "ا" twice in both query words. In this case the correct spelling should be [رائعة الجمال]. It's important that Google search recognizes your query — despite spelling errors.
To address issues like this, we recently developed a search ranking improvement that targets certain Arabic queries. Our algorithm employs rules of Arabic spelling and grammar along with signals from historical search data to decide when to leave out spaces between words or when to remove unnecessarily repeated letters. Now, when you type a query leaving out spaces or repeating a letter, we'll return better results based not only on what you typed, but also on what our algorithm understands is the "correct" query. For example, here's what happens when you type [قصيدة راائعةالجماال] ([amazingly beautiful poem] in Arabic) with repeated letters and dropped spaces between words.
As you can see, the Google results contain the corrected query, the terms قصيدة رائعة الجمال, in bold.
For most people, this might seem like a small enhancement. But for us, it’s a big change. Our tests show we've improved search for 10% of Arabic language queries. Which, when you think about it, is a lot of people.
Posted by Moustafa Hammad and Mohamed Elhawary, Software Engineers, Search Quality Team
We've learned that when performing a search on Google, people sometimes forget to separate words with spaces. Moreover, people often mistakenly repeat a letter within a single word. For instance, when writing the query [amazingly beautiful poem], you might write it as [amazingly beautiifullpoem].
These types of errors are much more common in languages like Arabic, where most of the letters are cursive. That means that the shapes of the letters change, based on the position of the letter in the word (initial, middle, final or isolated). Moreover, some Arabic letters are considered word breaks, meaning that the following letter must be in an "initial" shape. In other words, if the last letter of one word is a word break, the following word may not be separated with a space.
For example, the queries [وزارةالتعليم] and [وزارة التعليم] have an identical meaning (Ministry of Education) and they're both written in a common form for Arabic documents. But they have different, albeit correct, formats — the first query is written as a single word, while the second is written as two. Google needs to understand that while they're written differently, they mean the same thing and should yield the exact same search results. In this example, both queries were written correctly, just in different formats. But sometimes people just make errors — like repeating the same letter twice. For example, you might write [راائعة الجماال], repeating the letter "ا" twice in both query words. In this case the correct spelling should be [رائعة الجمال]. It's important that Google search recognizes your query — despite spelling errors.
To address issues like this, we recently developed a search ranking improvement that targets certain Arabic queries. Our algorithm employs rules of Arabic spelling and grammar along with signals from historical search data to decide when to leave out spaces between words or when to remove unnecessarily repeated letters. Now, when you type a query leaving out spaces or repeating a letter, we'll return better results based not only on what you typed, but also on what our algorithm understands is the "correct" query. For example, here's what happens when you type [قصيدة راائعةالجماال] ([amazingly beautiful poem] in Arabic) with repeated letters and dropped spaces between words.
As you can see, the Google results contain the corrected query, the terms قصيدة رائعة الجمال, in bold.
For most people, this might seem like a small enhancement. But for us, it’s a big change. Our tests show we've improved search for 10% of Arabic language queries. Which, when you think about it, is a lot of people.
Posted by Moustafa Hammad and Mohamed Elhawary, Software Engineers, Search Quality Team
Categories: Others
Announcing Google's Focused Research Awards
(Cross-posted with the Google Research Blog)
It is said that Google is like a university — and not just because everyone eats their lunch off trays in the cafeteria. Like a university, we devote significant energy to research across a wide array of subjects — from semantics to help improve search, to ways we can improve the efficiency of our data centers. Along with our internal efforts, we've long invested in building a strong, mutually beneficial relationship with universities and the research community. We give approximately 150 research grants a year to fund projects across a variety of subjects, we host visiting faculty members here at Google on sabbatical, and last year we started the Google Fellowship Program to fund graduate students doing innovative research in several fields.
Today, we're announcing the first-ever round of Google Focused Research Awards — funding research in areas of study that are of key interest to Google as well as the research community. These awards, totaling $5.7 million, cover four areas: machine learning, the use of mobile phones as data collection devices for public health and environment monitoring, energy efficiency in computing, and privacy. These are all areas in which Google is already deeply invested, and yet there is a long way to go. We're excited to see what these projects contribute to the body of research in these important areas.
These unrestricted grants are for two to three years, and the recipients will have the advantage of access to Google tools, technologies and expertise. We've given awards to 12 projects led by 31 professors at 10 universities:
Machine Learning: William Cohen, Christos Faloutsos, Garth Gibson and Tom Mitchell, Carnegie Mellon University
Use of mobile phones as data collection devices for public health and environment monitoring: Gaetano Borriello, University of Washington and Deborah Estrin, UCLA
Energy efficiency in computing:
Update at 1:13 PM: Added Allesandro Acquisti and Norman Sadeh to the list of PIs on the CMU privacy project.
Posted by Alfred Spector, Vice President of Research and Special Initiatives
It is said that Google is like a university — and not just because everyone eats their lunch off trays in the cafeteria. Like a university, we devote significant energy to research across a wide array of subjects — from semantics to help improve search, to ways we can improve the efficiency of our data centers. Along with our internal efforts, we've long invested in building a strong, mutually beneficial relationship with universities and the research community. We give approximately 150 research grants a year to fund projects across a variety of subjects, we host visiting faculty members here at Google on sabbatical, and last year we started the Google Fellowship Program to fund graduate students doing innovative research in several fields.
Today, we're announcing the first-ever round of Google Focused Research Awards — funding research in areas of study that are of key interest to Google as well as the research community. These awards, totaling $5.7 million, cover four areas: machine learning, the use of mobile phones as data collection devices for public health and environment monitoring, energy efficiency in computing, and privacy. These are all areas in which Google is already deeply invested, and yet there is a long way to go. We're excited to see what these projects contribute to the body of research in these important areas.
These unrestricted grants are for two to three years, and the recipients will have the advantage of access to Google tools, technologies and expertise. We've given awards to 12 projects led by 31 professors at 10 universities:
Machine Learning: William Cohen, Christos Faloutsos, Garth Gibson and Tom Mitchell, Carnegie Mellon University
Use of mobile phones as data collection devices for public health and environment monitoring: Gaetano Borriello, University of Washington and Deborah Estrin, UCLA
Energy efficiency in computing:
- Ricardo Bianchini, Rutgers, Fred Chong, UC Santa Barbara, Thomas F. Wenisch, University of Michigan and Sudhanva Gurumurthi, University of Virginia
- Christos Kozyrakis, Mark Horowitz, Benjamin Lee, Nick McKeown and Mendel Rosenblum, Stanford
- David G. Andersen and Mor. Harchol-Balter, Carnegie Mellon University
- Tajana Simunic Rosing, Steven Swanson and Amin Vahdat, UCSD
- Thomas F. Wenisch, Trevor Mudge, David Blaauw and Dennis Sylvester, University of Michigan
- Margaret Martonosi, Jennifer Rexford, Michael Freedman and Mung Chiang, Princeton
- Ed Felten, Princeton
- Lorrie Cranor, Alessandro Acquisti and Norman Sadeh, Carnegie Mellon University
- Ryan Calo, Stanford CIS
- Andy Hopper, Cambridge University Computing Laboratory
Update at 1:13 PM: Added Allesandro Acquisti and Norman Sadeh to the list of PIs on the CMU privacy project.
Posted by Alfred Spector, Vice President of Research and Special Initiatives
Categories: Others
Wrapping up our Free Holiday WiFi program
In November, we officially launched our Free Holiday WiFi gift. 54 airports, one airline and many millions of connected WiFi users later, our two-month Free Holiday WiFi sponsorship ended on January 15. We're happy to have made this year's holiday travel season just a bit easier for the millions of people who logged on and connected at our participating airports and on Virgin America flights.
Though some airports will no longer have free WiFi, we're excited that Burbank, Seattle and most recently, Boston airports have all decided to offer free WiFi all year.
In the spirit of the season, passengers connecting to the networks donated over $250,000 to Engineers Without Borders, One Economy Corporation and Climate Savers Computing Initiative. With Google's matching donation, the three charities received over $500,000 in total.
Finally, Edward Doan of Austin, Texas won the grand prize of ten Virgin America tickets, a Motorola Droid from Verizon Wireless and a Canon SX200 digital camera. You can view a complete list of winners on the contest site.
Posted by Jeff Aguero and Missy Krasner, Product Marketing Managers
Though some airports will no longer have free WiFi, we're excited that Burbank, Seattle and most recently, Boston airports have all decided to offer free WiFi all year.
In the spirit of the season, passengers connecting to the networks donated over $250,000 to Engineers Without Borders, One Economy Corporation and Climate Savers Computing Initiative. With Google's matching donation, the three charities received over $500,000 in total.
Finally, Edward Doan of Austin, Texas won the grand prize of ten Virgin America tickets, a Motorola Droid from Verizon Wireless and a Canon SX200 digital camera. You can view a complete list of winners on the contest site.
Posted by Jeff Aguero and Missy Krasner, Product Marketing Managers
Categories: Others
This week in search 1/31/10
This is part of a regular series of posts on search experience updates that runs weekly. Look for the label This week in search and subscribe to the series. - Ed.
From Google Squared enhancements to search becoming more social, this week brought a slew of exciting and (we hope) useful search feature releases:
Social Search
Sometimes, there might be relevant content on the web from people in your social circle. For example, learning what your friend thinks about the latest gadget or exotic travel location (e.g. in his or her blog) can help enhance your search experience. Until recently, there was no easy way to find this type of content published by your friends. Last October, we launched Social Search in Google labs to help solve this problem.
After a large number of users opted in and tried out the feature, Social Search has graduated and is available in beta for all signed-in users on google.com in English. We also added this feature to Google Images and gave you a way to visualize your social circle. To learn more about Social Search and how to get better social search results check out this post or this video.
Google Squared single item landing page
Last year we launched Google Squared, an experimental search tool that collects facts from the web and presents them in an organized collection, similar to a spreadsheet. For categorical searches like [us presidents] or [dog breeds], Google Squared produces the type of extracted facts you might be interested in, and presents them in a meaningful way. Starting this week, Google Squared has a new design to better handle queries looking for a single thing, like a specific president or a particular breed of dog. The page is now easier to read and includes multiple images, and you can still add, remove or change the type of facts that are visible.
Example searches: [barack obama] and [boston terrier]
Better labels for Time/LIFE images
In late 2008, we worked with Time/LIFE to digitize several million archival images never been seen before, and made them available in Image Search. At that time, many images in the collection had descriptions and labels and were easy to search for. But some had less descriptive information, making them more difficult to find. Now it's possible for knowledgeable users to label images and enrich the collection. Over time, we hope the Google community will make the quality of image search better than ever before.
Example: [Cincinnati baseball]. Note the "labels" in the bottom righthand corner.
We hope you enjoy the variety of new features this week.
Posted by Johanna Wright, Director of Product Management, Search
From Google Squared enhancements to search becoming more social, this week brought a slew of exciting and (we hope) useful search feature releases:
Social Search
Sometimes, there might be relevant content on the web from people in your social circle. For example, learning what your friend thinks about the latest gadget or exotic travel location (e.g. in his or her blog) can help enhance your search experience. Until recently, there was no easy way to find this type of content published by your friends. Last October, we launched Social Search in Google labs to help solve this problem.
After a large number of users opted in and tried out the feature, Social Search has graduated and is available in beta for all signed-in users on google.com in English. We also added this feature to Google Images and gave you a way to visualize your social circle. To learn more about Social Search and how to get better social search results check out this post or this video.
Google Squared single item landing page
Last year we launched Google Squared, an experimental search tool that collects facts from the web and presents them in an organized collection, similar to a spreadsheet. For categorical searches like [us presidents] or [dog breeds], Google Squared produces the type of extracted facts you might be interested in, and presents them in a meaningful way. Starting this week, Google Squared has a new design to better handle queries looking for a single thing, like a specific president or a particular breed of dog. The page is now easier to read and includes multiple images, and you can still add, remove or change the type of facts that are visible.
Example searches: [barack obama] and [boston terrier]
Better labels for Time/LIFE images
In late 2008, we worked with Time/LIFE to digitize several million archival images never been seen before, and made them available in Image Search. At that time, many images in the collection had descriptions and labels and were easy to search for. But some had less descriptive information, making them more difficult to find. Now it's possible for knowledgeable users to label images and enrich the collection. Over time, we hope the Google community will make the quality of image search better than ever before.
Example: [Cincinnati baseball]. Note the "labels" in the bottom righthand corner.
We hope you enjoy the variety of new features this week.
Posted by Johanna Wright, Director of Product Management, Search
Categories: Others
Unicode nearing 50% of the web
About 18 months ago, we published a graph showing that Unicode on the web had just exceeded all other encodings of text on the web. The growth since then has been even more dramatic.
Web pages can use a variety of different character encodings, like ASCII, Latin-1, or Windows 1252 or Unicode. Most encodings can only represent a few languages, but Unicode can represent thousands: from Arabic to Chinese to Zulu. We have long used Unicode as the internal format for all the text we search: any other encoding is first converted to Unicode for processing.
This graph is from Google internal data, based on our indexing of web pages, and thus may vary somewhat from what other search engines find. However, the trends are pretty clear, and the continued rise in use of Unicode makes it even easier to do the processing for the many languages that we cover.
Searching for "nancials"?
Unicode is growing both in usage and in character coverage. We recently upgraded to the latest version of Unicode, version 5.2 (via ICU and CLDR). This adds over 6,600 new characters: some of mostly academic interest, such as Egyptian Hieroglyphs, but many others for living languages.
We're constantly improving our handling of existing characters. For example, the characters "fi" can either be represented as two characters ("f" and "i"), or a special display form "fi". A Google search for [financials] or [office] used to not see these as equivalent — to the software they would just look like *nancials and of*ce. There are thousands of characters like this, and they occur in surprisingly many pages on the web, especially generated PDF documents.
But no longer — after extensive testing, we just recently turned on support for these and thousands of other characters; your searches will now also find these documents. Further steps in our mission to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.
And we're angling for a party when Unicode hits 50%!
Posted by Mark Davis, Senior International Software Architect
Web pages can use a variety of different character encodings, like ASCII, Latin-1, or Windows 1252 or Unicode. Most encodings can only represent a few languages, but Unicode can represent thousands: from Arabic to Chinese to Zulu. We have long used Unicode as the internal format for all the text we search: any other encoding is first converted to Unicode for processing.
This graph is from Google internal data, based on our indexing of web pages, and thus may vary somewhat from what other search engines find. However, the trends are pretty clear, and the continued rise in use of Unicode makes it even easier to do the processing for the many languages that we cover.
Searching for "nancials"?
Unicode is growing both in usage and in character coverage. We recently upgraded to the latest version of Unicode, version 5.2 (via ICU and CLDR). This adds over 6,600 new characters: some of mostly academic interest, such as Egyptian Hieroglyphs, but many others for living languages.
We're constantly improving our handling of existing characters. For example, the characters "fi" can either be represented as two characters ("f" and "i"), or a special display form "fi". A Google search for [financials] or [office] used to not see these as equivalent — to the software they would just look like *nancials and of*ce. There are thousands of characters like this, and they occur in surprisingly many pages on the web, especially generated PDF documents.
But no longer — after extensive testing, we just recently turned on support for these and thousands of other characters; your searches will now also find these documents. Further steps in our mission to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.
And we're angling for a party when Unicode hits 50%!
Posted by Mark Davis, Senior International Software Architect
Categories: Others
