This week in search 3/7/10

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.

This week's enhancements include:

Stars in search
Every day, we work to improve the four key components of search: comprehensiveness, latency, user experience and relevance. Of these, relevance is dramatically enhanced by more personalized results. This week, we announced a new feature that makes it much easier to mark and rediscover your favorite content. Stars in search are just like the stars you see in Google Toolbar or in Maps — they act like bookmarks. When you star a search result, and it happens to appear again in future results, you'll see that you already found that particular result. Starred items will appear at the top of your results. Stars in search has been rolling out this week, and will be available globally for all users who are signed in to their Google account.

Auto-spell for images
This week, we unveiled automatic spell correction for images. In cases where we're highly confident you had intended to type something else, we'll replace results from the typo query with those from the spell-corrected version — just like when you misspell a query in Google search. Ultimately, this change will reduce the time it takes to get you the result you're looking for (and that's a good thing).

Example searches: [butterflys], [roman architecture] and [apollo ohno]

Sidewiki page owner entry
In September, we launched Sidewiki, which lets you contribute helpful information to any webpage using a sidebar in Google Toolbar or a Chrome extension. Afterward, webmasters asked, "How can I quickly put Sidewiki on all pages of my site?" Now webmasters can create a special entry, called a page owner entry, that appears above all entries written by users. Webmaster tool improvements ultimately create a better web experience for us all, so we're pleased about this. Let us know what you think about our webmaster enhancements.



Stay tuned for next week's news on more search launches.

Posted by Johanna Wright, Director of Product Management, Search

Over 4,000 developers at Google I/O 2010

As of today, this year's Google I/O conference has sold out and registration is closed. That means more than 4,000 developers will be joining us on May 19-20 at Moscone West in San Francisco.

Like years past, I/O will feature over 90 in-depth sessions and the opportunity to meet and learn from other developers, including those from the more than 160 companies that will demo in the Developer Sandbox. For those unable to attend, video recordings of technical sessions will be available on YouTube following the conference.

From now until May, we'll continue to list new speakers, new sessions, and new Sandbox participants on the Google I/O website. To keep up with the latest event info and details, follow us on Twitter.

Posted by Vic Gundotra, Vice President of Engineering

Stars make search more personal

We've long believed that personalization makes search more relevant and fun. For nearly five years, we've been tailoring results with personalized search. Today we're announcing a new feature in search that makes it easier for you to mark and rediscover your favorite web content — stars.

With stars, you can simply click the star marker on any search result or map and the next time you perform a search, that item will appear in a special list right at the top of your results when relevant. That means if you star the official websites for your favorite football teams, you might see those results right at the top of your next search for [nfl]. Here's what the new "Starred results" feature looks like:


The great thing about stars is that you don't have to keep track of them. You don't even have to remember whether or not you starred something. Simply perform a search and you'll rediscover your starred items right when you need them. Stars sync with your Google Bookmarks and the Google Toolbar, so you can always see your list of starred items in one place and easily organize them. Even beyond the results page, while browsing the web you can quickly click the star icon in Toolbar to create a bookmark, and those pages will start showing up in the new stars feature.

Stars in search replace SearchWiki. In our testing, we learned that people really liked the idea of marking a website for future reference, but they didn't like changing the order of Google's organic search results. With stars, we've created a lightweight and flexible way for people to mark and rediscover web content. For people who like annotations, we have Sidewiki, a more powerful way for people to contribute and discover helpful information next to pages across the Internet. All your existing SearchWiki edits will be preserved with your Google Account. You can learn more on our help center.

Stars in search are rolling out in the next couple days and will be available globally for all signed-in users.

Posted by Cedric Dupont, Product Manager and Matthew Watson, Software Engineer

Searching for gold during the Games

During the past two weeks, athletes from around the world competed at the Games in Vancouver. While these thousands strove for gold, millions around the world searched for 2010 Winter Olympics, 밴쿠버 동계올림픽 (Korean for "Vancouver Winter Olympics"), and Juegos Olimpicos de Invierno 2010 (Spanish for "2010 Olympic Winter Games") using Google search. Now that the medals have been handed out, we thought we'd take a moment to share how some people from around the world searched for information about the Games.

Norway
Norway won 23 medals, including nine gold, and became the first region to win 300 medals at winter events and to win 100 golds. The timeline shows approximate Olympics-related queries from Norway. Although interest was slow to start, it built and repeatedly peaked as Norwegians won in cross-country skiing events: individual (February 17), team (February 22), and men's 50km (February 28); and biathlon events: individual (February 18) and men's team (February 26).

(Click on any image to enlarge)

Japan
Japanese athletes won silver and bronze medals in speed skating and figure skating — correspondingly, interest peaked on the days when those competitions took place. And although they ended the Games ranked eighth in the world, チーム青森 ("Team Aomori") generated a lot of queries for カーリング ("curling"), カーリング チーム青森 ("Curling Team Aomori"), and team member 本橋麻里 (Mari Motohashi). Queries also peaked when snowboarder Kazuhiro Kokubo, who had previously caused controversy by wearing sloppy attire, competed in the men's halfpipe event. The timeline also clearly shows the effect of television, with each day's first peak representing the actual time of the event and the second, larger peak occurring in the evening.


Korea
Korean athletes won medals in speed skating, short-track speed skating — and one gold medal in Ladies' Figure Skating by Kim Yu-Na. Queries such as 김연아 세계신기록 ("Yu world record"), 김연아 007 ("Yu 007"), and just plain 김연아 ("Kim Yu-Na") increased an order of magnitude as Kim won the Ladies' Short Program on February 23 and ended the Ladies' Free Skating on February 25 with a new world record score of 228.56.

United States
Americans were interested in both the opening ceremonies and the unfortunate death of Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili. The men's free skating program on February 18, when Evan Lysacek won gold, drew many more searchers than the women's skating program on February 25, in which there was no American medalist. Interest in the unexpectedly good performance of the USA men's hockey team versus Canada (February 21) and against Switzerland (February 24) was exceeded by the exciting Canada v. USA final (February 28), which ended with a Canadian win in overtime. (Incidentally, the success of the men's hockey team also led searchers to look for information about a historic USA win. Searches for Miracle on Ice peaked the day after the USA team beat the Canadian team in the preliminary rounds.) Much of the television coverage in the U.S. was tape-delayed; queries arrived during the events but typically peaked during the evening TV broadcasts.


Canada
Canada was not only the host — it also won the most gold medals of any region during any such games. Like the U.S., interest began with the opening ceremonies, and was dominated by men's hockey queries, causing a huge spike during the gold-medal game on February 28 as well as smaller spikes for games against USA (February 21) and Russia (February 24). The final women's hockey game against the U.S. on February 25 also caused a small bump in searches.

Canada took home the most gold medals, while the U.S. won the most medals overall. But where did Games-related searches dominate? To find out, we looked at the regions which had the highest percentage of Games-related searches out of all queries. Perhaps not surprisingly, Canadians were more than twice as likely to search for "Vancouver 2010", "medal count," or their favorite athletes as their southern neighbors, which were the second most likely to make Games-related queries. And although the Netherlands was not a leader in the medals count, its citizens' Games-related query proportion was the third highest in the world.

And finally, the Games wouldn't be the same without the stars — the athletes. The most searched-for individual gold medal-winning athletes were:
1. Shaun White (U.S. men's halfpipe)
2. 김연아 (Kim Yu-Na; Korea ladies' figure skating)
3. Lindsey Vonn (U.S. ladies' downhill Alpine skiing)
4. Sven Kramer (Netherlands men's 5000m speed skating)
5. Evan Lysacek (U.S. men's figure skating)

We hope you had a great time watching — and searching for info about — the Games. We'll see you again in a few years!

Posted by Jeffrey D. Oldham, Software Engineer

Google welcomes Picnik

(Cross-posted from the Google Photos Blog)

More than ever before, people are sharing and storing their photos online. But until recently, you had to edit your photos using client software on your computer. Today, we're excited to announce that Google has acquired Picnik, one of the first sites to bring photo editing to the cloud. Using Picnik, you can crop, do touch-ups and add cool effects to your photos, all without leaving your web browser.


We're not announcing any significant changes to Picnik today, though we'll be working hard on integration and new features. As well, we'd like to continue supporting all existing Picnik partners so that users will continue to be able to add their photos from other photo sharing sites, make edits in the cloud and then save and share to all relevant networks.

We're very impressed with the Picnik team and the product they've created, and we're excited to welcome them to Google. We're looking forward to collaborating closely with them to improve the online photo editing experience on the web. In the meantime, we encourage you to head to Picnik, import some of your photos from Picasa Web Albums, Flickr or Facebook and try your hand at photo editing in the cloud!

Posted by Brian Axe, Product Management Director

Announcing the winners of the Street View trike contest

The polls have closed, the votes have been tallied and the people have spoken: it’s time to announce the winners of our Street View trike suggestions contest. Last October, we gave Street View fans the opportunity to vote for the special attractions around the United States that they most want to see featured on Google Maps. In the first round, we received more than 25,000 suggestions, which we narrowed down to the 24 finalists that were put up to a public vote. All in all, nearly a quarter million votes were cast.

• The most popular category among all voters was University Campuses, racking up nearly 70,000 votes. Topping the list was Rochester Institute of Technology (Rochester, New York). Reminiscing alumni, prospective students or empty-nest parents will be able to tour the university through Street View for a unique look at campus life.

• Cyclists also came out in droves to cast their ballots for their favorite riding spots, and the Boulder Creek Path (Boulder, Colorado) rode away with victory in the Parks & Trails category. Our trike riders — and the avid bike riders in Google’s Boulder office — are looking forward to the chance to take a ride along this scenic 5½-mile greenway.

• History buffs, potential tourists and online window-shoppers will soon be able to take a virtual stroll through the grounds of Faneuil Hall Marketplace (Boston, Massachusetts), the most popular submission in the Pedestrian Malls category.

• In the National Landmarks category, voters elected a location that actually encompasses many of the United States’ most famous landmarks, including the Smithsonian Insitution museums, the Washington Monument and the Capitol Building. That’s right: the National Mall in Washington, D.C. emerged victorious.

• The manually-pedaled trike will soon be making its way to the Motor City to ride through the Detroit Zoo, the top vote-getter in the Theme Parks & Zoos category. With this imagery, families and animal lovers will be able visit the kangaroos and wallabies from the Australian Outback Adventure and the polar bears in the Arctic Ring of Life.

We’re now working directly with each of the winning organizations to arrange a visit from our trike in the coming months, so don’t be surprised if you see this quirky contraption at your favorite destination sometime soon:



​Because so many of you – 238,000, to be exact – expressed a desire to have the trike visit your favorite place, also be working with many of the other finalists, so stay tuned for more exciting special collections from our trike. And if you happen to manage or work at another attraction that you think absolutely needs to be featured in Street View, please let us know!

Posted by Dan Ratner, Senior Mechanical Engineer

Update from the Google Health Team

As we exhibit at the Health Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) trade show this year in Atlanta, we want to share with you some of our latest thinking. Google Health has been on the market for a little over two years, and in that time we have seen a growing understanding of the value of consumers being able to own, use, manage and share their medical data online with whomever they choose. While companies like ours work to build technologies like Google Health to make this a reality, we've also seen growing support from the U.S. Government. President Obama has included incentives for doctors to adopt electronic health records (EHRs) in the the American Recovery and Re-Investment Act of 2009 (AARA), and in recent months there have also been a series of Health IT provisions around "Meaningful Use" and EHR Certification all of which should help empower consumers with access to their own information. (Read our recent op-ed for more info about this topic.)

At Google, we understand that changes in the health care industry take time and persistence, including health IT. We have been steadily analyzing feedback from our user surveys and field studies to help make Google Health more useful and relevant to a broad set of consumers on a daily basis. People have been telling us they want more tools to personalize, customize and track their own medical information. These are directions we're certainly exploring, and if you stop by our booth this week at HIMSS you can see a demo of what we're working on.

While we work to refine the Google Health product, we also continue to pursue integration agreements with providers to make it even easier for people to access their own medical information. We've learned over these past two years that getting a current and past medication history assembled and ready in case of emergencies is one of the strongest value propositions for using an online Personal Health Record (PHR). So today at HIMSS, we're announcing an integration with Surescripts, the leading electronic prescribing network in the United States, to help accelerate the availability of prescription drug history to our users. The Surescripts network connects doctors who prescribe medication to all of the nation’s major pharmacy chains, leading health insurance plans and pharmacy benefits managers (PBMs), as well as more than 10,000 independent pharmacies nationwide. Surescripts provides access to prescription benefit and history information on behalf of health insurance plans representing 65 percent of patients in the U.S.

Recognizing that hospital and ambulatory data is critical to our consumers, we're also announcing a future integration with the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) that will give patients the ability to add health information to an EHR maintained by doctors using their own Google Health PHR. UPMC is working on this integration with Google Health, Carnegie Mellon University and their technology partner dbMotion. Finally, we're announcing the launch of three more integration partners: Citizen Memorial Healthcare (CMH), a rural healthcare network providing care to residents in southwest Missouri, Iatric Systems, an integration consultant, which can facilitate Google Health integrations for hospitals and healthcare systems, and the Withings WiFi Body Scale, which allows Google Health users to seamlessly update their weight and other data to their online profiles.

We hope to see you this week at HIMSS. Come by our booth, see our demo and say hello.

Posted by Alfred Spector, Vice President of Research & Special Projects