Top Search Queries is now Search Queries with Average Position and Stars

Webmaster Level: All

Since we released the latest version of Top Search Queries in Webmaster Tools we've gotten a bunch of feedback, most of which was overwhelmingly positive. Today, we're happy to bring even more improvements to Top Search Queries that we've implemented as a direct result of your feedback. First of all we've shortened "Top Search Queries" to be just "Search Queries" to better reflect all of the data provided by this feature. In addition to the name change you'll notice that Search Queries has several new updates. As requested by many of you, we're now showing an "Average position" column right on the main Search Queries page. This provides a quick at-a-glance way to see where your site is showing in the search results for specific queries. The other change you'll notice is that we're showing a "Displaying" number for Impressions and Clicks. This number represents a total count of the data displayed in the Search Queries table. The number in bold appearing just above it is a total count of all queries including the "long tail" of queries which are not displayed in the Search Queries table. When the "Displaying" number is not visible, such as when you select a specific country from the "All countries" drop-down menu, then the bold number is the total count of the data displayed in the Search Queries table.



We've also added an Average position column to the Search Queries download.



The other addition we've made to Search Queries is a "Starred" tab. Next to each Query on the Search Queries page there is now a clickable star icon. You can click the star icon for all of the queries that are of most interest to you. All of the queries that you "star" will be consolidated under the Starred tab providing a super easy way to view just the queries you care about.



We hope that this update makes Search Queries even more useful. If you've got feedback or suggestions for Search Queries please let us know in the Webmaster Help Forum.

Written by Jonathan Simon, Webmaster Trends Analyst

The Google design, turned up a notch

This week we introduced our latest update to search, and I wanted to share a bit of our thinking on the design team. In short, we tried to take all the things we strive for at Google and make them better: powerful technology, snappy results, simplicity and a fun and quirky personality. Our goal was to take a design known by millions of people and make it better. As a designer, it’s hard to think of a more exciting challenge.

During our process we focused on people’s rising expectations for search. As the web has evolved over the past decade, people have been typing more sophisticated searches and seeking out specialized search tools to match. To keep pace with rapid change online, we have teams of engineers working across Google to develop new ways to present and refine search results. Our central challenge with our latest redesign was to figure out how to squeeze all these tools and technologies into a single page.

A common way to expand the flexibility of a website has been to add a left-hand panel of links, often referred to by designers as a “left-hand nav.” We’ve been creating mocks of left-hand panels since the earliest days of Google and have tested these designs with users as far back as 2006. Overall, we’ve found they can provide a great way to navigate without getting in the way of the main content, but they can also be distracting. Our users want more powerful tools, but they also want the simplicity they’ve come to expect from Google.

As a first step towards finding that balance, we introduced the Search Options panel last May, including a toggle to open and close. This way we could quickly try out new search tools, such as refinements by time and content types. Using the lessons from Search Options, designers, researchers and engineers worked side-by-side to explore a vast array of possibilities for a permanently open panel of search tools. We made hundreds of prototypes and gathered feedback from user studies, Googlers and through experiments — including one of our largest visible experiments ever. In the end, we came up with a design that provides dynamic, relevant search tools on the left, while lightening and updating the aesthetics all around. Here’s a picture of the Search Options panel (left) and our new results page (right):

We knew that adding a left-hand panel would inevitably add some weight to the results page, so we took a number of steps to lighten other aspects of the design. The overall visual redesign started with the Google logo. Here’s an image comparing the old logo (top) and the new logo (bottom):
The new logo is lighter, brighter and simpler. We took the very best qualities of our design — personality and playfulness — and distilled them. The logo was the foundation for new icons and hundreds of tiny alterations designed to accommodate and seamlessly integrate the expanded functionality of the left-hand panel. For example, we lightened up the footer at the bottom of the page by removing the blue shading and the underlines on the links, lightening the color and expanding the search box. Here’s a picture of the old footer (top) compared with the new (bottom):

While I’m very happy about our latest improvements, a designer's work is never done. We’re already testing additional refinements and we'll continue to listen to all of you as we work to continue making search better.

If you’re curious, here are some of the other design prototypes we tried (you might have to click to magnify some of these images):

1. Blue homepage: We’ve always had a strong affinity for blue — after all, blue is usually the color of web links, so it binds the web together. It became the basis for many designs.
2. Blue button: The big blue button made it all the way to our first external experiment, where it was promptly rejected by users. We heard you loud and clear and changed the button in the next round.
3. Universal bars: This design emphasizes different types of results with labeled blocks in the main results pane, such as books, news and shopping.
4. Blue results: This is one of the final blue designs we created and marks the point when we renamed the "Web" link to "Everything" — a label that gets closer to the intent of our mission to organize all the world’s information.

Posted by Jon Wiley, Senior User Experience Designer

Live, from Google I/O!

(Cross-posted with the Google Code Blog)

More than 4,000 developers will be joining us at Google I/O on May 19-20, and if we had the capacity, we’d host many more. In order to give the entire developer community a chance to participate live, we're happy to announce that both keynote presentations will be streamed live. To watch, just go to http://www.youtube.com/GoogleDevelopers at the start of the keynotes each day. We recommend watching on a high-speed connection for the best quality.

Here’s the schedule for the keynotes at I/O — it’s also available on our agenda page:

• Day 1 Keynote: Wednesday, May 19, 9:00 -10:30am PT
• Day 2 Keynote: Thursday, May 20, 8:30-10:00am PT

Both keynote sessions feature exciting new technologies, so be sure to mark your calendars!

Posted by Christine Tsai, Google Developer Team

Happy half-birthday Dashboard! Six months in and 100,000 users a day

Six months ago, we launched the Google Dashboard to help you view and control information stored in your Google Account. It’s organized according to the products you use (like Gmail, Docs or YouTube), listing data stored in your account and providing direct links to control your personal settings.

Since we’re celebrating our very first half-birthday, we thought it was the ideal time to update you on how things are going. On average, around 100,000 unique visitors a day check out their Dashboard, 85 percent for the first time. Since launch, we’ve worked to grow Dashboard, adding a number of other Google products including Sites, Maps, Books, Webmaster Tools, Buzz, Goggles, Sidewiki and Analytics. We’re still working on adding other products to the tool and are talking with users about new ways to improve the functionality moving forward.

We launched the Dashboard to provide you with greater transparency and control. We’re proud of its success so far and look forward to what’s next. If you haven’t looked at your own Dashboard yet, check it out!



Posted by Yariv Adan, Product Manager

Call for webspam reports in Thai, Indonesian, Romanian, Czech and Farsi

Webmaster Level: All

Update on May 19, 2010: We have several translated versions of this post! If you're more comfortable reading Thai, Indonesian, Romanian, Czech, or Farsi, the links above will take you to your preferred version. Thanks again for your help.

We pay attention to dozens of different languages in our spam fighting, but sometimes we really want to drill down and concentrate on a small number of languages. We’d like to ask for your help to identify webspam in Thai, Indonesian, Romanian, Czech and Farsi. If you know of sites that violate our webmaster guidelines in these languages, please send us a spam report. We use this information not only to look at the sites listed in reports, but also to improve our effectiveness in the rest of your language on the web.

Thanks in advance for any data you send our way about spam in these languages. Of course, you’re always welcome to submit spam reports in other languages too!

Written by Viktor Nebehaj and Matt Cutts, Search Quality Team

A spring metamorphosis — Google’s new look

Using Google today, you may have noticed that something feels slightly different — the look and feel of our search results have changed! Today’s metamorphosis responds to the increasing richness of the web and the increasing power of search — revealing search tools on the left and updating the visual look and feel throughout. While we are constantly rolling out small changes and updates, today’s changes showcase the latest evolutions in our search technology, making it easier than ever to find exactly what you're looking for.

The new Google look, with simple left-hand navigation.

What’s new and what’s changed?
We’ve added contextually relevant, left-hand navigation to the page. This new side panel highlights the most relevant search tools and refinements for your query. Over the past three years, we've launched Universal Search, the Search Options panel and Google Squared, and it’s those three technologies that power the left-hand panel.

Universal Search helps you find the most relevant types of results for your search. The top section of the new left-hand panel builds on Universal Search by suggesting the most relevant genres of results for your query and letting you seamlessly switch to these different types of results. The “Everything” option remains our essential search experience with different types of results integrated into the main results, but now you can also easily switch to just the particular type of results you are looking for.

Our expandable Search Options panel launched last spring brought many rich slice-and-dice tools to search. The new left-hand navigation showcases these tools and enables you to get a different view of your results. Perhaps you’d like to see images from each of the results or just the newest information? These options are all on the left, and our technology will suggest the tools that are most relevant and helpful to your query.

Google Squared (available on Google Labs) helps you find and compare entities. Our “Something different” feature builds on the technology in Google Squared to find other entities that are related to your query, so you can easily explore not only the results for your current query but other related topics.

In addition to the left-hand side changes, we’ve updated our look and feel in terms of our color palette and our logo. These changes are slight, keeping our page minimalist and whimsical, but make our overall look more modern.

The new design refreshes and streamlines the look, feel and functionality of Google, making it easier to pinpoint what you’re looking for. It’s powerful, yet simple. Today’s changes are the latest in our continuing efforts to evolve and improve Google. We've been testing these changes with users over the past few months, and what we're launching today reflects the feedback we've received.. We want to ensure that the Google you use today is better than the one you used yesterday, and these latest changes open up many possibilities for future features and enhancements.

To hear more about our new design, check out this video:


Our new interface begins rolling out today globally across 37 languages. We are also launching the mobile version concurrently for English interfaces in the United States. Search on!

Posted by Marissa Mayer, VP Search Products & User Experience

Mapping the Gulf oil spill in Google Earth

Two weeks ago, there was a fatal explosion on the offshore oil rig Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico. The rig sank shortly afterwards, and since then the well has been leaking crude oil into the Gulf, spreading an oil slick towards the U.S. Gulf Coast. This spill is pouring as many as 5,000 barrels (210,000 gallons) of oil a day into the Gulf and poses a serious threat to coastal industries, sensitive habitats and wildlife, including numerous species along the coastal areas of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. Many government agencies and other organizations have made data publicly available, which we’ve compiled on our crisis response site dedicated to the spill.

Last week we made imagery from NASA’s MODIS available as an overlay for Google Earth, which currently shows the extent of the oil spill through April 29, and we’ll continue to add more imagery as it becomes available. We’ve also made radar images from ESA’s ENVISAT available through this KML file. Below, you can see the progression of the spill over time.


To view this imagery and other datasets in Google Earth, turn on the “Places of Interest” layer in the Layers panel on the left-hand side of Google Earth, then navigate to the Gulf of Mexico and click on the red icon.


In addition to this imagery, our site contains maps of the locations of the oil, fishing closures and affected areas, the ability to upload videos directly to YouTube, and a link to a site where people in the area can contribute their observations. We hope these resources are useful to those affected by the spill, those responding to it and those learning about its devastating effects on the people and environment of the Gulf Coast.

Posted by Christiaan Adams, Google Crisis Response team