Inside Search
The official Google Search blog
Travelers can now access Flight Search from their tablets
September 28, 2012
(Cross-posted on the
ITA Software by Google
blog)
More and more travelers are using tablets to search for and book travel. In fact,
46% of all US tablet owners
who search for travel, actually purchase via their tablet. We also know that people use their tablets differently than they use their desktop. That’s why we’ve optimized our
Flight Search
experience for those who prefer to search with a tablet, such as a Nexus 7 or an iPad.
Starting today, travelers can search for and book flights on any tablet device by going to
http://www.google.com/flights/
. With the touch of your finger, you can easily explore places to visit on the map and see prices updated in real-time for each destination.
If you’re flexible with your dates you can also use our lowest fares tool and scroll across days, weeks and months to find the cheapest dates to take your trip. Your results will be updated super-fast, even when you switch dates or destinations.
We hope this makes planning your next trip easier and more enjoyable -- whether you’re using your desktop, laptop,
mobile device
or tablet. We look forward to your continued feedback on
Flight Search
.
Posted by Rani Manoharan, User Interface Designer, Travel
Insights into what the world is searching for -- the new Google Trends
September 27, 2012
Since we launched
Google Trends
and
Google Insights for Search
, we’ve seen millions of people using Trends to keep up with trending interests online, and a range of journalists, businesses and researchers around the world using Insights for Search to compare the popularity of search terms over time and across regions. We have made steady
improvements
over time, most recently
revamping our Hot Searches list
to provide richer context for breakout searches.
Now we are merging Insights for Search into Google Trends, wrapping it all up in a clean new interface to give you a clearer view of what’s on the world’s mind.
The new Google Trends
now includes features from both products and makes it easier and more intuitive to dig into the data. We’ve updated the line chart and map using
HTML5 based Google Chart Tools
so you can now load the page on your mobile devices, visualize the results without scrolling, and get Hot Searches not just for the U.S., but also India, Japan, and Singapore.
So, what exactly can you learn about people’s interests from Google Trends? A few of our recent favorites:
[beach] and [snow] are
just about inverse throughout the year
West Virginia leads the US in
searches for spooky things
(play around at the bottom left!)
Interest in [
red hot chili peppers
] shifted around Europe this summer as the band toured there -- see this time-lapse map:
We’ve seen so
many examples
of insights gleaned from Trends, from the
Oscars
to the
Super Bowl
; from
shopping
to
elections
; from our yearly
Google Zeitgeist
summary to the many we’ve found
around the web
.
Google Trends data can be used to better understand global trends -- identifying health trends such as in
flu trends
,
nowcasting in economics
, and studies on the
predictability of search trends
. And it has been used in many
scientific articles
across disciplines.
There’s so much in this data for journalists, academics, and anybody who’s curious about the world to explore, and we’d love to see what you find. Email us your favorites at
trends-stories@google.com
.
Posted by Yossi Matias, Senior Engineering Director in Search, Head of Israel R&D Center
Oktoberfest anyone?
September 21, 2012
(Cross-posted on the
ITA Software by Google
blog)
If you’re thinking about attending
the 179th Oktoberfest
, there’s still time. It runs September 22 -October 7 in Munich, Germany. Just in case you’re planning a trip, we’ve assembled some tips for how you can use Google tools like Flight Search, Hotel Finder, Maps and Transit to help you plan an amazing trip -- whether you’re using your desktop, laptop or on your Android device.
If you want to figure out the best beer tents to visit, this
Google Map
will be a great place to turn during the event (will be live 09/22/12). When the pin over the tent is green, the tent still has seating and is open. When the pin is red, the tent is closed because of overfilling.
My favorite tent is the Hippodrom, a smaller tent frequented by a younger crowd -- and recently discovered by celebrities. It offers beer -- of course -- but also has a sekt (sparkling wine) bar that is pretty stylish. You should plan on arriving early if you want to visit.
You can also see live pics from Oktoberfest by clicking on various webcams on the
map
. This capability is very useful in providing information to help you choose the tents you’re most interested in visiting.
You might also want to plan ahead and consider the crowds and traffic. With Google Maps for Android, you can take a look at live traffic to see if you want to drive -- or choose to just walk, bike or take transit.
If you want to see more of Germany, you can use
Google Transit
to reach other cities such as Hamburg or Frankfurt. This navigation tool includes information about Deutsche Bahn (DB) trains and recommends the best transit options, taking into account various factors such as duration and number of Umstiege (transfers/stops). The options are then shown on the map, along with time, train type and duration of the trip. This is especially handy because it’s possible to click through from the transit options page, to purchase your tickets on
bahn.de
without needing to reenter the dates!
And if you’re a non-Bavarian who doesn’t speak German, don’t worry. You can use Google Translate or the official
Oktoberfest dictionary
to communicate with the locals.
So now that your interest is piqued, you’ll probably want to plan a trip right away. You can do so by going to
www.google.com
and searching for [flights to Munich]. Your departure city will be automatically recognized; mine was New York City. As you change your dates, prices will instantly update.
I prefer nonstop flights, so I clicked on “Nonstop” to get a list of flight times available at the $1,073 USD price and then evaluated various attributes of the flights -- including the cost of checked bags for this ticket. Once I picked the flights that worked for me, I clicked the red “Book” button to make my booking via the airline’s website.
Finally, you can use Hotel Finder to find hotels near Oktoberfest in Munich. You can do this by going to
www.google.com/hotelfinder
and entering [Oktoberfest Munich, Germany], along with the dates you plan to be in town. You can use the reviews, images, ratings and pricing information to create a shortlist. Once I selected the hotel I was interested in, I used the red booking button which took me to
www.booking.com
to complete my reservation.
We hope you found these tips helpful. Whether you end up hitting the Wiesn tents this October, or visiting Germany at some point in the future, we hope to help you plan your trip and connect with travel suppliers with ease.
Posted by Noam Ben Haim, Senior Product Manager, Travel
Power Searching with Google is back
September 11, 2012
(Cross-posted on the
Google Student Blog
)
If you missed
Power Searching with Google
a few months ago
or were unable to complete the course the first time around, now’s your chance to
sign up again
for our free online course that aims to empower our users with the tools and knowledge to find what they’re looking for more quickly and easily.
The community-based course features six 50-minute classes along with interactive activities and the opportunity to hear from search experts and Googlers about how search works. Beginning September 24, you can take the classes over a two-week period, share what you learn with other students in a community forum, and complete the course assessments to earn a certificate of completion.
During the course’s first run in July, people told us how they not only liked learning about new features and more efficient ways to use Google, but they also enjoyed sharing tips and learning from one another through the forums and Hangouts. Ninety-six percent of people who completed the course also said they liked the format and would be interested in taking similar courses, so we plan to offer a suite of upcoming courses in the coming months, including Advanced Power Searching.
Stay tuned for further announcements on those upcoming courses, and don’t forget to
register now for
Power Searching with Google
. You’ll learn about things like how to search by color, image, and time and how to solve harder trivia questions like our
A Google a Day
questions. We’ll see you when we start up in two weeks!
Posted by Dan Russell, Uber Tech Lead, Search Quality & User Happiness
Explore with the Knowledge Graph carousel in English globally
September 5, 2012
Last month, we showed how you can now get answers to your questions with the help of the Knowledge Graph even when the best answer is not just a single person or thing, but a collection or list of items. When looking for [cedar point rides], you see a carousel of popular roller coasters at the amusement park, drawing on our Knowledge Graph and the collective intelligence of the Web. The feature was initially available in English on google.com, and we’re now taking our first steps to make it available more widely around the world. Over the next couple days, we’ll begin showing the carousel for factual lists to our English users on all Google domains across the world.
This works for a variety of locally interesting lists like [aamir khan movies], [cast of the it crowd] or [mountains of the alps] or more general queries like [saturn’s moons] or [dog breeds]. The carousel makes it easy to explore the items in the list -- it stays attached to the top of the search results page so you can flip through the items easily and dive in deeper if something catches your interest. Happy exploring!
Posted by Kavi Goel, Product Manager
The power of the Apollo missions in a single Google search
August 28, 2012
The two of us are old enough to remember the thrill of seeing Neil Armstrong walk on the moon in the summer of 1969. Many things have changed since then, and incredible progress has been made in some areas. As we reflect back on our own experience, and try to match today's world to 1969, we decided to compare the amount of computation available to NASA engineers then versus what's available now.
The Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) on board the lunar module (LM) executed instructions at a speed of about 40 KHz (or 0.00004 GHz), about 100,000 times slower than a high-end laptop today. There was also a similar real-time computer built into the Saturn V rocket. On the ground, NASA had access to some of the most powerful computers of the day: five IBM model 360/75 mainframe computers, each about 250 times faster than the AGC. They were running nearly 24/7, calculating lift-off data and orbits, monitoring biomedical data during the mission, and performing numerous other calculations.
We compared that to what Google does today, and we found that:
It takes about the same amount of computing to answer one Google Search query as all the computing done -- in flight and on the ground -- for the entire Apollo program!
When you enter a single query in the Google search box, or just speak it to your phone, you set in motion as much computing as it took to send Neil Armstrong and eleven other astronauts to the moon. Not just the actual flights, but all the computing done throughout the planning and execution of the 11-year, 17 mission Apollo program. That’s how much computing has advanced. It is easy to take this for granted, but this computing power helps make the world a better place and opens the door for amazing things to come.
Posted by Udi Manber and Peter Norvig
Improving Google Patents with European Patent Office patents and the Prior Art Finder
August 14, 2012
(Cross-posted from the
Google Research Blog
and
Google Public Policy Blog
)
At Google, we're constantly trying to make important collections of information more useful to the world. Since 2006, we’ve let people discover, search, and read United States patents online. Starting this week, you can do the same for the millions of ideas that have been submitted to the European Patent Office, such as
this one
.
Typically, patents are granted only if an invention is new and not obvious. To explain why an invention is new, inventors will usually cite prior art such as earlier patent applications or journal articles. Determining the novelty of a patent can be difficult, requiring a laborious search through many sources, and so we’ve built a Prior Art Finder to make this process easier. With a single click, it searches multiple sources for related content that existed at the time the patent was filed.
Patent pages now feature a “Find prior art” button that instantly pulls together information relevant to the patent application.
The Prior Art Finder identifies key phrases from the text of the patent, combines them into a search query, and displays relevant results from Google Patents, Google Scholar, Google Books, and the rest of the web. You’ll start to see the blue “Find prior art” button on individual patent pages starting today.
Our hope is that this tool will give patent searchers another way to discover information relevant to a patent application, supplementing the search techniques they use today. We’ll be refining and extending the Prior Art Finder as we develop a better understanding of how to analyze patent claims and how to integrate the results into the workflow of patent searchers.
These are small steps toward making this collection of important but complex documents better understood. Sometimes language can be a barrier to understanding, which is why earlier this year we
released an update to Google Translate
that incorporates the European Patent Office’s parallel patent texts, allowing the EPO to provide translation between English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and Swedish, with more languages scheduled for the future. And with the help of the United States Patent & Trademark Office, we’ve continued to add to
our repository of USPTO bulk data
, making it easier for researchers and law firms to analyze the entire corpus of US patents. More to come!
Posted by Jon Orwant, Engineering Manager
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