Google Search

Google announced today that it is rolling out a new interactive carousel for restaurants and other local places directly in search results on the desktop. Users will be able to click on thumbnails in the carousel to quickly get more info on a specific place, including: “overall review-based score, address and photos.” The feature was previously available to some Nexus tablet and iPad users since rolling out back in December, but today it’s rolling out to everyone through Google search on the desktop:
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Microsoft must be pretty happy with Apple’s decision to include Bing as the default search engine powered web results in Apple’s revamped Siri application heading to iOS 7 this fall. However, what does this all mean for Google? It could very well signal Apple’s increasing desire to cut its reliance on services powered by its biggest competitor in the smartphone space.

Before iOS 7, searching for something with Siri would often turn up the option to search for web results. Doing so would give you results through Safari using your default search engine (which by default is set to Google). Now, in iOS 7, web results will be displayed right in the Siri app, however, they will be powered by Microsoft’s Bing– and not Google. 
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As noted by Droid Life , Google is rolling out nutritional information from the Knowledge Graph into its search results for users in the U.S. over the next ten days.

Google Now will be able to take advantage of these results across various platforms including Android and its iOS application:

From the basics of potatoes and carrots to more complex dishes like burritos and chow mein, you can simply ask, “How much protein is in a banana?” or “How many calories are in an avocado?” and get your answer right away. You’ll hear the answer to your specific question, see relevant nutrition information under an expansion, and be able to switch to other related foods or serving sizes.

Many consumers will value this information as caloric intake and personal fitness trends more and more popular. Even fast food restaurants are starting to report nutritional information for its products. Good on Google’s part for making this information more accessible for everyone.
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via phandroid.com

Google appears to be readying a Google Now web interface for the company’s Siri-like voice search with Google’s homepage as the intended destination.

It’s no surprise that Google would bring its voice search to the web, as it already offers the service on Android and plans to bring it to iOS (Google Search for iOS currently offers real-time voice search but doesn’t support Google Now cards), and tends to have a cross-platform approach to its services as opposed to Apple’s ownership approach to its services.

Sure, Apple does have limited iCloud functionality on Microsoft’s Windows operating system and allows users to manage iCloud from a nicely designed web interface, but Apple only offers Siri on the iPhone 4S and 5, as well as the iPad mini, iPad 3 and 4, and latest iPod touch, though the upcoming release of OS X 10.9 could bring Siri to the Mac just in time to compete with Google Now on the web.

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According to Bloomberg, U.K. based internet map provider Streetmap is suing Google over allegedly favoring its own maps to those of competitors. Streepmap is claiming that it’s harder to find their maps (and other competitors) in a Google search than it is to find Google Maps. Streetmaps is calling the issue a “cynical manipulation” by Google and is calling for a change in the way Google displays map related search results:

“We have had to take this action in an effort to protect our business and attract attention to those that, like us, have started their own technology businesses, only to find them damaged by Google’s cynical manipulation of search results,” Kate Sutton, commercial director of Streetmap, said in the statement.

The lawsuit mirrors complaints at the heart of the EU’s current investigation into whether or not Google’s abuses its search dominance to favor its own services over competitors within search results and elsewhere. Earlier today we reported that Google had handed in a formal offer of concessions to the European Commission related to the investigation, but there is no word yet on exactly Google’s settlement offer includes…
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Google isn’t slowing down investing in new data center operations around the world. Back in January we heard that it is expanding its Berkley County data center in South Carolina with an additional $600 million investment bringing the project up to $1.2 billion total. Today, Associated Press reports that Google is set to invest $390 million in a new expansion of its European data center in Belgium.

Internet search giant Google says it is investing 300 million euros ($390 million) to expand its continental European data center. Google Inc. said Wednesday it will upgrade the facility in Belgium to meet growing demand for its online services

Back in October of last year Google opened its data center doors to all with a new project dubbed “Where the internet lives” that gives anyone a unique behind the scenes look at its facilities responsible for handling 20 billion web pages indexed per day, 3 billion daily searches, and free mail to 425 million Gmail users.

[tweet https://twitter.com/CNBC/status/266973350025367553]

Many reports are coming in that Chinese users are having trouble accessing a number of Google’s web products. There is no word on the exact cause of the service disruptions, but The Wall Street Journal noted Google’s Transpareny Report website shows “a precipitous drop in traffic in China starting more than eight hours ago,” although the site doesn’t list the services as completely inaccessible in the country. Google provided a statement to WSJ confirming the interruptions do not appear to be on its end:

“We’ve checked and there’s nothing wrong on our end,” a Google spokeswoman said in a prepared statement.

The Washington Post reported “Users with special VPN (virtual private network) services,” which many Chinese users take advantage of to access banned sites like Facebook, are still able to access Google’s services. 
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Google announced today on the Official Google Blog that it will now include public AMBER Alerts through Google Search results and Maps in coordination with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and the Google Public Alerts platform:

If you’re using Google Search or Maps on desktop and mobile you’ll see an AMBER Alert if you search for related information in a particular location where a child has recently been abducted and an alert was issued. You’ll also see an alert if you conduct a targeted search for the situation. By increasing the availability of these alerts through our services, we hope that more people will assist in the search for children featured in AMBER Alerts and that the rates of safe recovery will rise.

Google explained the alert could include information about an abducted child or additional details including “make and model of the vehicle he/she was abducted in or information about the alleged abductor.” It also said it is working with other organizations, such as Missing Children Europe and the Canadian Centre for Child Protection, to roll out alerts to other countries as well. Google has partnered with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in order to display the AMBER alert data:
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Google has opened its Google search+ Gmail result beta further this afternoon so more users can get Gmail results in their main Google Search. The feature was first introduced in a limited beta in August. For those who do not know about the feature, relevant Gmail conversations will appear in Google Search (as you can see in the image above). Just search “Paris” and emails that you have sent talking about “Paris” will then appear. If you think about it, expanded search makes a lot of sense.

Furthermore, the folks at Google announced this afternoon that Google Drive, Google Calendar and more will now appear when searching in Gmail:

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You may already be aware that Google search provides a calculator that offers answers to queries, such as 2+2 directly, from the main search results page. As pointed out by a reader, Google recently updated the calculator search functionality, and it now provides a full HTML5 scientific calculator for these types of search queries. The features work with voice—except for on mobile devices, as they do not have access to the full scientific calculator presented on desktops.

Earlier this month, Google started to roll out a similar widget on its search page for unit conversions, like inches to centimeters. Now, unit conversion queries are presented with the live unit conversion tool (pictured below) that allows you to switch between units of measurements for temperature, length, mass, speed, digital storage, and much more.

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In a blog post on his Google+ page, Google+ Product Manager Ronald Ho announced a new tool to transfer circles from one account to another that is now available through Google Takeout. In an overview of the long-requested feature, Google explained the tool would migrate “circle names, circle members, “your circles” settings, and people and pages you’ve blocked or ignored.” However, Google noted there is a 7-day waiting period before a transfer is initiated, and both profiles will have limited functionality until the transfer is complete:

-There’s a 7 day waiting period before your transfer begins.

-To cancel the transfer before it starts, sign in to either account on Google+. Then click Cancel transfer at the bottom of the page. Note that you cannot cancel using a mobile interface.

-If the source or destination accounts are managed by an organization, the account administrator may restrict your ability to transfer your connections and/or use Google+.

-You won’t be able to use this tool with these accounts again for 6 months.

-Once the transfer begins, it cannot be cancelled or undone.

As for limited functionality, both accounts will not be able to share content on Google+ during the transfer—nor can they add, remove, block, or ignore people in circles and elsewhere. Google continued by explaining the result of a transfer once complete:

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Google updated its Google Search iPhone app to version 2.0.0 today, which introduced a completely redesigned app that focuses on improvements to speed and full screen browsing features. Among the new features are an auto full screen mode that hides controls when scrolling down and reveals when scrolling up, and a new full-screen image search view.

The updated app also includes “major speed improvements,” a built-in text finder for webpages, and quick links to Gmail, Calendar, Docs, and search options such as images, places, and news. The iPad did not receive the same update, but both the iPhone and iPad will now be able to save images to the iOS camera roll.

A full list of features is below, while the updated app is available on the App Store now.

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Following an update to Gmail last week that brought improved search results and integration of contact information and Google+ Circles, today Google announced on the Official Gmail Blog that it is now including autocomplete predictions when searching from within your Gmail inbox.

Much like Google Web search and many of its other services, when beginning to type in the search bar from within Gmail, you will now see suggestions or autocomplete predictions matching content within your emails. Google explained:

Now when you type something into the Gmail search box, the autocomplete predictions will be tailored to the content in your email, so you can save time and get the information you want faster than ever before. For example, you might now get lax reservation or lax united as predictions after typing “lax” if you have received an email with a flight confirmation for your trip to Los Angeles in your inbox recently.

The new feature will roll out to English Gmail users over the next few days, but Google noted support for additional languages would roll out over the coming months. The feature is also not yet available to Google Apps users.

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A new report from The Next Web claimed a “source close to the product’s development” confirmed Google has a new commenting system in the works. With continued integration of Google+ into the rest of the company’s web services, the report claimed Google will likely aim to take on Facebook and its third-party commenting platform. The report explained:

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Google Docs can now spell check threw through the Web.

Software Engineer Yew Jin Lim took to the official Google Docs blog this afternoon to explain how the Internet is helping Google Docs get smarter. The ambiguous and ever-adapting Googlebot is able to crawl cyberspace and adapt to words. The resulting action enables Google to improve suggestions during misspelled queries in Google Search. Well now, the same process is applied to Google Docs…

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAIEamakLoY]

For the eleventh year in a row, Google publishes its annual overview of the fastest-growing search terms of the past year, providing a pretty accurate overview of search trends on the Google.com search engine. Called Zeitgeist, it “sorts billions of Google searches to capture the year’s ten fastest-rising global queries and the rest of the spirit of 2011”, says the official Zeitgeist site. We find the initiative pretty interesting. Not only does it offer a valuable insight into what searches revealed about the interests of users, it also reveals the issues that have troubled the world throughout the year.

A couple interesting highlights, per Google’s blog post:

• Rebecca Black was the #1 fastest rising query globally and Google’s own Google+ social thing is ranked second
• Adele made the fastest rising lists in over 15 countries
• Apple’s late co-founder Steve Jobs made the list (mark 1:50 in the above clip), as did reality star Ryan Dunn and defendant Casey Anthony
• iPad 3 and iPhone 5 were among the often-searched terms (no surprises here)
• Devotees turned to Google following the April 4 passing of Sai Baba, an Indian guru, spiritual figure, mystic, philanthropist, and educator
• cupcakes made top food lists in over a dozen countries
• Hurricane Irene in the U.S. and earthquakes in Christchurch and Japan also topped the charts as thousands of people affected by those natural disasters turned to Google.com to seek information about their loved ones

These are just a few of the many noteworthy findings of Zeitgeist 2011. Make sure to check out the official site, they’ve really upped the ante in the visualization department. We especially like detailed infographics and the tools allowing visitors to mine whatever data interests them most, and even compare terms across categories.

Twitter and Yahoo did a similar thing so you may wanna have a look at Twitter’s Year in Review and Yahoo’s Top Searches of 2011.

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Have you ever been curious to find out who spends the most money advertising on Google Search? AdAge has put together a list of Google’s top ad-spot buyers. If you’re a frequent Google Search-er you’re probably familiar with a lot of them, and probably have clicked on their ads before.

The media company IAC has earned the top-spot, spending $174,000 from January 2011 – September 2011. IAC owns popular online media properties like Match.com, Dictionary.com, Excite, and more. Amazon holds the second spot, with $118,000 spent within the same time period. It’s worth noting, pointed out by AdAge, that the fourth quarter is typically the most busiest time for advertising. These numbers will be much higher for 2011 as a whole.

Search still proves to be Google’s number one source of income. You might be thinking Android would, with 500,000 activations a day, but you have to remember Google makes Android open-source for all to use. All Android does for Google is draw traffic to their web products, which in turn could drive revenue through ads — Search being an example. Curious to see who else made the list? Check it out after the break.

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