Skip to main content

Google Search results can now display tables from data journalism articles

With the Google News Initiative announced earlier this year, the company is working to support journalism with features throughout News, YouTube, and of course Search. A new feature today for the latter product will display data tables right at the top of result pages.

After working with 30 of the top data journalists in the world, Google will begin displaying data tables right in Search results. This requires some work on the part of publishers as detecting, understanding, and displaying tables as relevant results isn’t an easy task for Google.

Sites will need to add additional structured data to datasets to help Google identify the table for Search. In one example from ProPublica, Google Search will directly display a specific line of a table with monetary figures as the first entry.

Previously, only a text description starting at the top of the page was available, while users can now get the results immediately, with a link to open the full page at the bottom of the graph.

Google notes that there will be no impact to how the original table appears on the original site as part of this Search accommodation. More developer documentation is available here.

News organizations add the structured data to their existing html of a page, which means that news organizations can still control how their tables are presented to readers.


Check out 9to5Google on YouTube for more news:

FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.

You’re reading 9to5Google — experts who break news about Google and its surrounding ecosystem, day after day. Be sure to check out our homepage for all the latest news, and follow 9to5Google on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn to stay in the loop. Don’t know where to start? Check out our exclusive stories, reviews, how-tos, and subscribe to our YouTube channel

Comments

Author

Avatar for Abner Li Abner Li

Editor-in-chief. Interested in the minutiae of Google and Alphabet. Tips/talk: abner@9to5g.com