Now S-U-P-E-R-sized!

<a href="http://www.google.com/">Search</a>, that is. For us, search has always been our focus. And, starting today, you'll notice on our homepage and on our search results pages, our search box is growing in size. Although this is a very simple idea and an even simpler change, we're excited about it — because it symbolizes our focus on search and because it makes our clean, minimalist homepage even easier and more fun to use. The new, larger Google search box features larger text when you type so you can see your query more clearly. It also uses a larger text size for the suggestions below the search box, making it easier to select one of the possible refinements. Over the past 11 years, we've made a number of <a href="http://www.google.com/corporate/timeline/#homepage-original-prototype">changes to our homepage</a>. Some are small and some are large. In this case, it's a small change that makes search more prominent.<br /><br />Google has always been first and foremost about search, and we're committed to building and powering the best search on the web — now available through a supersized search box.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlaOghn_RZAuYlgs3jwy9j740_UYNCEDAZ1hT5vw7VAljQsJsSinm1SthGwF4SXznKUgaRvI8To3jWcvTJ7vu7dGIf5aoeafEL6mFblD8eVjmKYpVH9wigDSrcuSn88YUn_Am4OhDU63vJ/s1600-h/new-old-search-next.png" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5379583174096973298" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlaOghn_RZAuYlgs3jwy9j740_UYNCEDAZ1hT5vw7VAljQsJsSinm1SthGwF4SXznKUgaRvI8To3jWcvTJ7vu7dGIf5aoeafEL6mFblD8eVjmKYpVH9wigDSrcuSn88YUn_Am4OhDU63vJ/s400/new-old-search-next.png" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; width: 500px;" /></a><span style="font-size:85%;"><br /></span><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-style: italic;">Before and after on Windows XP, running Google Chrome. Click on the image for a larger view. </span></span><br /></div><br />Posted by Marissa Mayer, Vice President, Search Products & User Experience

Now S-U-P-E-R-sized!

Search, that is. For us, search has always been our focus. And, starting today, you'll notice on our homepage and on our search results pages, our search box is growing in size. Although this is a ver…

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Designing useful mobile services for Africa

Last week, we announced a suite of <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/06/extending-google-services-in-africa.html">SMS services in Uganda</a>, a country where someone's first experience of the Internet is far more likely to be on a mobile device rather than a PC. We are really excited about this project in part because it is the result of more than a year of true user-centered research and design. We knew we wanted to build useful mobile services tailored to the needs of people in sub-Saharan Africa, but how could we find out what people want from the Internet when they don't have access to it already? What would people who had never used search before want to search for if we gave them a mobile phone and said "Ask any question you like"?<br /><br />In early 2008 we set out with colleagues from <a href="http://google.org/">Google.org</a>, <a href="http://www.grameenfoundation.org/what_we_do/technology_programs/ict_innovation/application_laboratory/">Grameen Applab</a> and <a href="http://www.mtn.co.ug/">MTN</a> (a network carrier in Uganda) with this challenge in mind. Our research needed to be able to assess the feasibility of delivering information via mobile in Uganda as well as evaluate the content "appetites" of local people. Since no search engine existed for testing, we did the next best thing: We decided to mimic the experience of using a search engine using human experts.<br /><br />First, we trained a multilingual team to act as user researchers in 17 carefully selected locations across the country. In each place, they introduced themselves to a cross section of people they met and invited them to participate in a free study that would help create useful services for Ugandans. If the person agreed, the researcher handed them a mobile phone and encouraged them to write a text message containing a question they wanted to know the answer to. (If people had their own phone, we reimbursed them with phone credit.) The text message was then routed to a control room we'd set up in Kampala where a human expert read the text message, typed a response, and sent it back via SMS to the person who asked the question. In the meantime, the interviewer observed and recorded the participant's user experience. This allowed us to record rich qualitative data from hundreds of interviews in just a few days, and to collect quantitative data from hundreds of search queries.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhjC1KbNUHLDux8Pyeq4kAauMaXYRmQCwIbO6CPdwvp6MjpDnTYmVkXrjaKrffNHWTcjqbMOLHYv4OrV0zAUQYR0WAkrVQfqlPSOP4jvfFz5-Av39NfnpEI5ZSgzbkpPHtw5oXqEwghy8S/s1600-h/africa+post.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5356154253311404626" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhjC1KbNUHLDux8Pyeq4kAauMaXYRmQCwIbO6CPdwvp6MjpDnTYmVkXrjaKrffNHWTcjqbMOLHYv4OrV0zAUQYR0WAkrVQfqlPSOP4jvfFz5-Av39NfnpEI5ZSgzbkpPHtw5oXqEwghy8S/s400/africa+post.jpg" style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 400px;" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 10px; ">Trying mobile search for the first time</span><br /></div></span><br />Last week's launch of SMS services in Uganda is the direct result of this research — it's based on listening to what people want and finding a way to get it to them. Our research enabled us to observe first-hand how people instinctively wanted to interact with a mobile phone. We let people select the language they wanted to use. We gained deep insights into the way people formulate their questions and what questions really matter to them. On top of that, we saw the excitement on people's faces when they got their first-ever search results, and we realized that some of the information we could deliver to these users, such as health information, has the power to truly change lives. These new services in Uganda are just one step on the path to providing information to people who have little or no access to the web. This research will help us as we continue to develop more services to increase access to information all around the world.<br /><br /><span class="byline-author">Posted by Sian Townsend, Mobile User Experience Researcher, and Charles Warren, Mobile User Experience Design Manager</span>

Designing useful mobile services for Africa

Last week, we announced a suite of SMS services in Uganda, a country where someone's first experience of the Internet is far more likely to be on a mobile device rather than a PC. We are really excite…

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The evolution of Gmail labels

I love <a href="http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=118708">labels</a> in Gmail. Most email programs use folders, which only let me put mail in one place at a time. With labels, I can organize mail in multiple ways. Combined with <a href="http://mail.google.com/support/bin/topic.py?hl=en&topic=12853">filters</a> to automatically label incoming messages, Gmail offers powerful ways to organize email.<br /><br />When I joined the Gmail team, I was surprised to learn that only 29% of Gmail users had created <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">any</span> labels. At first, I thought perhaps conversation threading and search made the need to organize our mail less important. But when we talked to people who use Gmail, we got a different story. People often asked us to add folders to Gmail, assuming no system of organization existed. As one person said in a usability study, "What are labels... and where are my folders?"<br /><br />We realized that if you didn't know about labels, it would be easy to assume Gmail had no way to organize your mail. Not only were "labels" unfamiliar, they were kind of hidden. So, we set out to make labels more accessible, as well as more powerful. Most of the changes have been in Gmail for a while, but we're adding some <a href="http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/labels-drag-and-drop-hiding-and-more.html">new features today</a>. We thought you'd enjoy a peek at the method to our madness.<br /><br />The first thing we did was make labels look more like the sticky notes you use in real life. Making the interface mimic things you interact with outside the computer can sometimes improve ease of use.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiw72X-0RKEKGbW-A655kQBvL6gEs2TuPN-IDjSjvYp9cVIgkSF7BVuU04j78UG8wgLzkrQxnm_GfeQo_5OQRC1vjr-XFXUcgvfYEnxjzBxn-IvTYFaszMFbK9BYBrcjHARcFyhtQhG2yvT/s1600-h/colored_labels-short.png"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5353528671185666642" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiw72X-0RKEKGbW-A655kQBvL6gEs2TuPN-IDjSjvYp9cVIgkSF7BVuU04j78UG8wgLzkrQxnm_GfeQo_5OQRC1vjr-XFXUcgvfYEnxjzBxn-IvTYFaszMFbK9BYBrcjHARcFyhtQhG2yvT/s400/colored_labels-short.png" style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 66px;" /></a><br />We also made it easier to remove a label from an open conversation:<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbONJBb_XxrUTRAadmd6naYfmtwAsgXPeitaNVPQMDSoH39HaFDyS-xxwo4YN8eXj94ZB4ClCvK_wnhmsRjq2x-ysqwTbvly9t-lIOGV-9dlwWyPjbTudkPeg__xnCL1FURzBv84LebiW1/s1600-h/remove_label.png"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5353528679205882418" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbONJBb_XxrUTRAadmd6naYfmtwAsgXPeitaNVPQMDSoH39HaFDyS-xxwo4YN8eXj94ZB4ClCvK_wnhmsRjq2x-ysqwTbvly9t-lIOGV-9dlwWyPjbTudkPeg__xnCL1FURzBv84LebiW1/s400/remove_label.png" style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 111px;" /></a><br />Then we worked on the actions you take to apply and remove labels. Before, to put a label on a message, you had to look under "More actions> Apply label." Not only was this option hidden in a generic menu, but the language wasn't what people are familiar with when it comes to organizing mail. We explored several alternatives:<div><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhc5Qlk2Il5QbcHaqccA2MBup-xt_Q1DeD3W_ABx1GFyVvHbA6Dyzj3cwuHZKglAW9NUgYNbz9LvIc2BcnG4hsqG-Y0rdpsrBMfsNapey5DMOeSsh372vjgyY_39HxISIy4X-2EgJfpkWSK/s1600-h/move_to.png"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5353528677914360114" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhc5Qlk2Il5QbcHaqccA2MBup-xt_Q1DeD3W_ABx1GFyVvHbA6Dyzj3cwuHZKglAW9NUgYNbz9LvIc2BcnG4hsqG-Y0rdpsrBMfsNapey5DMOeSsh372vjgyY_39HxISIy4X-2EgJfpkWSK/s400/move_to.png" style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 292px; height: 400px;" /></a><br />We also learned that if we made labels sound too much like folders, people got confused. For instance, while "Copy to" and "Add to" were easy to use, these terms made people think they were creating multiple copies of a message. "Move to" was familiar but didn't lead people to think they were creating copies. And people seem to have picked it up fast! Since the launch of the <a href="http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2009/02/new-ways-to-label-with-move-to-and-auto.html">new menu buttons</a> in March, we're seeing a 50% increase in new Gmail users trying labels in their first 2 weeks. And overall usage of the "Move to" menu surpassed that of the "Labels" menu within 7 weeks of launching:<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmz9RKTAmBIHPdmN8R5dO_0YpBimdi45oTJZ5maotNdSXvAb41NsaWvr89tr3uwqKbKzxlC7PDeFBYKF5FiVjmgX3F_wngjjrYZ6LyRDCt262Yd2fpDVv-DNMioWphU6WrjaKRMYQRJLca/s1600-h/label_vs_moveto.png"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5353528684682428098" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmz9RKTAmBIHPdmN8R5dO_0YpBimdi45oTJZ5maotNdSXvAb41NsaWvr89tr3uwqKbKzxlC7PDeFBYKF5FiVjmgX3F_wngjjrYZ6LyRDCt262Yd2fpDVv-DNMioWphU6WrjaKRMYQRJLca/s400/label_vs_moveto.png" style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 324px;" /></a><br />For our latest set of changes, we looked at how you access labels on the left side. In other email applications, folders get the royal treatment and are given a seat at the top near your inbox. But in Gmail, labels were stuck in a box below Chat — almost like we were telling people, "you don't want to use these." In testing, we discovered that it worked best to remove the terminology altogether and just place custom labels right under the system labels (e.g. "Inbox"):<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfHcdeq0XmfND3fzYE9BJjMDUXw7GkaUr9jEawVQzkZtc_L49C9qyK5baatOVMp4cCGt-I7iCPxGU7IwihG0WcKk_f1Eg-DLMqOM1VQTd3pP6krisVV8ePM1_y6VJ9dk5ELV989ZZPtC1G/s1600-h/left_nav_compare.png"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5353529498975279442" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfHcdeq0XmfND3fzYE9BJjMDUXw7GkaUr9jEawVQzkZtc_L49C9qyK5baatOVMp4cCGt-I7iCPxGU7IwihG0WcKk_f1Eg-DLMqOM1VQTd3pP6krisVV8ePM1_y6VJ9dk5ELV989ZZPtC1G/s400/left_nav_compare.png" style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 272px;" /></a>The last step was to add drag-and-drop. Now, you can drag mail into a label, or even drag a label directly onto a message:<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9bAAX3oramrsBAnPiMF31vB0_6A34bqXOVDUeY-KfzOEAPrCwhcAdM2S31QQCJE1eYsaqgthudfVgJvSRL0QG4gM6DxcchLpt5pRj7buqCNf9_pj-qronv8dbdgJXmxblrFPHKOVLftv9/s1600-h/drag.png"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5353528677554646418" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9bAAX3oramrsBAnPiMF31vB0_6A34bqXOVDUeY-KfzOEAPrCwhcAdM2S31QQCJE1eYsaqgthudfVgJvSRL0QG4gM6DxcchLpt5pRj7buqCNf9_pj-qronv8dbdgJXmxblrFPHKOVLftv9/s400/drag.png" style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 72px;" /></a><br />Making it easier to process and organize your mail requires more than just labels, but we hope these changes start to improve the process. We have much more in store, so stay tuned and keep the <a href="http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/gmail/label?lid=613f70d9ff743405">feedback</a> coming.<br /><br /><span class="byline-author">Posted by Michael Leggett, Gmail User Experience Designer</span></div>

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The evolution of Gmail labels

I love labels in Gmail. Most email programs use folders, which only let me put mail in one place at a time. With labels, I can organize mail in multiple ways. Combined with filters to automatically la…

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New logo look

You may have noticed new logos at the top of some of Google's web pages, including <a href="http://www.googlelabs.com/">Google Labs</a>, <a href="http://moderator.appspot.com/">Google Moderator</a>, and <a href="http://code.google.com/">Google Code</a>. These are the result of a new logo design we are rolling out. We hope this design freshens up our look as well as improves consistency and ease of use across our sites. Now, our product names will appear in clean, simple blue lowercase type alongside the Google logo as shown here:<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9U7wY742vUfVnjxYtu9x9XFvtAULZnipztA4GEaOIWKN4HYJr5A4yCXIyYiWfXCUvRnTphTwd8Buu0F1Dff90gDm-xbhseNT0GCuCYYAF0ZIJbKmbVb8b9lRPSMXL4pCq7JrJR4qvFMP6/s1600-h/google_logos.png"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5338408223180742370" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9U7wY742vUfVnjxYtu9x9XFvtAULZnipztA4GEaOIWKN4HYJr5A4yCXIyYiWfXCUvRnTphTwd8Buu0F1Dff90gDm-xbhseNT0GCuCYYAF0ZIJbKmbVb8b9lRPSMXL4pCq7JrJR4qvFMP6/s400/google_logos.png" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 303px;" /></a>Since the logos appear in many different locations and sizes on our websites, our new designs are standardized to be the same size and color wherever they appear. This should make it easier for you to recognize which site you are on and navigate to wherever you want to go. They are also consistent across all our international domains, which is especially helpful for people using right-to-left languages such as Arabic and Hebrew.<br /><br />We are happy with this change since it will help us streamline our user experience. Count on seeing the new logos rolling out to Google Maps, Google News, Google Docs and more over the next few weeks.<br /><br /><span class="byline-author">Posted by Marissa Mayer, Vice President of Search Products and User Experience, and Jamie Divine, Senior Visual Designer</span>

New logo look

You may have noticed new logos at the top of some of Google's web pages, including Google Labs, Google Moderator, and Google Code. These are the result of a new logo design we are rolling out. We hop…

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Eye-tracking studies: more than meets the eye

Imagine that you need a refresher on how to tie a tie. So, you decide to type [how to tie a tie] into the Google search box. Which of these results would you choose?<br /><br /><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5297226899518548434" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZ3zxth2piK3LXkTi_GBpK47lDI5N86_bWUTURY5k8uzVuBoceKedp39isy1Rs3ZgclIxwvUThArfmrUBUzto3M8Vcfk7H9sM4y7vnsQ5P78GWDeV63aw2ihudo6MndmhAZgDLgUzCEMRu/s400/1-howtotieatie.jpg" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 382px; height: 400px;" /><br />Where did your eyes go first when you saw the results page? Did they go directly to the title of the first result? Did you first check the terms in boldface to see if the results really talk about tying a tie? Or maybe the images captured your attention and drew your eyes to them?<br /><br />You might find it difficult to answer these questions. You probably did not pay attention to where you were looking on the page and you most likely only used a few seconds to visually scan the results. Our User Experience Research team has found that people evaluate the search results page so quickly that they make most of their decisions unconsciously. To help us get some insight into this split-second decision-making process, we use eye-tracking equipment in our usability labs. This lets us see how our study participants scan the search results page, and is the next best thing to actually being able to read their minds. Of course, eye-tracking does not really tell us what they are thinking, but it gives us a good idea of which parts of the page they are thinking about.<br /><br />To see what the eye-tracking data we collect looks like, let's go back to the results page we got for the query [how to tie a tie]. The following video clip shows in real time how a participant in our study scanned the page. And yes, seriously — the video is in real time! That's how fast the eyes move when scanning a page. The larger the dot gets, the longer the users' eye pauses looking at that specific location.<br /><br /><object height="344" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/w29DrEEsqT4&hl=en&fs=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/w29DrEEsqT4&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br />Based on eye-tracking studies, we know that people tend to scan the search results in order. They start from the first result and continue down the list until they find a result they consider helpful and click it — or until they decide to refine their query. The heatmap below shows the activity of 34 usability study participants scanning a typical Google results page. The darker the pattern, the more time they spent looking at that part of the page. This pattern suggests that the order in which Google returned the results was successful; most users found what they were looking for among the first two results and they never needed to go further down the page.<br /><br /><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5297226902585795138" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiH5AuBvxX4x9tc6hjlMcoVB-rrWOqXh__FcYZDY-AxgHx09-F98z_Lp0xiUoMVDIArMWJYKL1w0lhrGeH8LxkS_zfEH62L_pY-zGVN61xC2aRngLBvA4bll1lmDewHLxrrMI-5DUskaEH0/s400/2-goldentriangle.jpg" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 374px; height: 400px;" /><br />When designing the user interface for <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/05/universal-search-best-answer-is-still.html">Universal Search</a>, the team wanted to incorporate thumbnail images to better represent certain kinds of results. For example, in the [how to tie a tie] example above, we have added thumbnails for Image and Video results. However, we were concerned that the thumbnail images might be distracting and disrupt the well-established order of result evaluation.<br /><br />We ran a series of eye-tracking studies where we compared how users scan the search results pages with and without thumbnail images. Our studies showed that the thumbnails did not strongly affect the order of scanning the results and seemed to make it easier for the participants to find the result they wanted.<br /><br />The thumbnail image seemed to make results with thumbnails easy to notice when the users wanted them (see screenshots below — page with the thumbnail image on the right)...<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZ2q3FuqakUGfxLkKrz47Uk_oKuEh7ilNWFC6lBTxBnI1tLmoamtMDBtAAyCn_AKOZqEepNHsZU07n1p5NVQJOHANVmL3Z3FoiC2IeC30Y1uZTL4231V57Yb8p2d5EzHzsn5BCRk56YKCT/s1600-h/3-aninconvenienttruth.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5299742939311627346" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZ2q3FuqakUGfxLkKrz47Uk_oKuEh7ilNWFC6lBTxBnI1tLmoamtMDBtAAyCn_AKOZqEepNHsZU07n1p5NVQJOHANVmL3Z3FoiC2IeC30Y1uZTL4231V57Yb8p2d5EzHzsn5BCRk56YKCT/s400/3-aninconvenienttruth.jpg" style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 142px;" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><div style="text-align: center;">Click the images to  view them larger.<br /></div></span><div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div>...and the thumbnails also seemed to make it easy for people to skip over the results with thumbnails when those results were not relevant to their search (page with the thumbnail on the right).<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgd4dlQKPJZm8KK0ccza5j3tg0p2HzJycQRMC1s_rT_w5bZ66JiAPZ2Bc-ZF22UyUQypBoeqrwjQfYObRNDs6JEAgRebfVdLk2OdiiTBulM-FZRSY29iXE3JZahXpEr7mpS9Pjx-K6pSZQ4/s1600-h/4-bees.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5299742942596031810" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgd4dlQKPJZm8KK0ccza5j3tg0p2HzJycQRMC1s_rT_w5bZ66JiAPZ2Bc-ZF22UyUQypBoeqrwjQfYObRNDs6JEAgRebfVdLk2OdiiTBulM-FZRSY29iXE3JZahXpEr7mpS9Pjx-K6pSZQ4/s400/4-bees.jpg" style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 155px;" /></a><br /></div><div>For the Universal Search team, this was a successful outcome. It showed that we had managed to design a subtle user interface that gives people helpful information without getting in the way of their primary task: finding relevant information.<br /><br />In addition to search research, we also use eye-tracking to study the usability of other products, such as <a href="http://news.google.com/">Google News</a> and <a href="http://images.google.com/">Image Search</a>. For these products, eye-tracking helps us answer questions, such as "Is the 'Top Stories' link discoverable on the left of the Google News page?" or "How do the users typically scan the image results — in rows, in columns or in some other way?"<br /><br />Eye-tracking gives us valuable information about our users' focus of attention — information that would be very hard to come by any other way and that we can use to improve the design of our products. However, in our ongoing quest to make our products more useful, usable, and enjoyable, we always complement our eye-tracking studies with other methods, such as interviews, <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/11/art-of-field-study.html">field studies</a> and <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/04/this-is-test-this-is-only-test.html">live experiments</a>.<br /><br /><span class="byline-author">Posted by Anne Aula and Kerry Rodden, User Experience Researchers</span></div></div>

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Eye-tracking studies: more than meets the eye

Imagine that you need a refresher on how to tie a tie. So, you decide to type [how to tie a tie] into the Google search box. Which of these results would you choose?Where did your eyes go first when y…

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New Google Help Forums

For the last few years, the <a title="Google Help Forums" href="http://www.google.com/support/bin/static.py?page=portal_groups.cs&hl=en" id="nxic" style="color: rgb(85, 26, 139);">Google Help Forums</a> have been a great gathering place for users, developers, and anyone else who has an opinion about Google or its products. We've been taking stock of what you have to say, and we've been impressed by the hundreds of thousands of people who really understand our products and are willing to share their knowledge. It's because of experts like the <a href="http://groups.google.com/group/orkut-help/web/who-are-the-orkuteers" id="j85a" title="orkuteers" style="color: rgb(85, 26, 139);">orkuteers</a>, <a href="http://www.google.com/support/a/bin/static.py?page=power_poster_bios.html" id="y5iu" title="Google Apps Power Posters" style="color: rgb(85, 26, 139);">Google Apps Power Posters</a>, <a href="http://groups.google.com/group/Google_Webmaster_Help/web/google-webmaster-help-bionic-posters" id="d_0g" title="SketchUp Sages">Webmaster Help Bionic Posters</a> and many others that the forums are a great place for getting quality answers, reporting bugs, offering product suggestions and sharing tips and tricks.<br /><br />To make it even easier to get you the right answers to your questions as quickly as possible and to spot the most helpful commenters, we are converting our forums to a new system designed to help, encourage and reward everyone who visits.<br /><br />Some of the features include:<br /><ul><li> improved search results, including posts from current and new forums</li></ul><ul><li> the ability to designate especially helpful forum members as "Top Contributors"</li></ul><ul><li> a reputation and ranking system</li></ul><ul><li> the ability for users, Top Contributors and Googlers to mark questions as answered</li></ul><ul><li> easier access to Help Center content</li></ul><ul><li> expanded user profiles that highlight your forum activity</li></ul><br />This video gives you a few more details on our latest changes:<br /><br /><object height="344" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/6ka0bvcbuSo&hl=en&fs=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/6ka0bvcbuSo&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" height="344" width="425"></embed></object><br /><br />A few products -- <a href="http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/AdWords?hl=en&utm_source=googleblog&utm_medium=blog&utm_campaign=awforum">AdWords</a>, <span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:Arial;"></span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"></span></span><a href="http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/AdSense?hl=en&utm_sourceid=aso&utm_campaign=ww-en-et-google_blog_11-06-08&utm_medium=link">AdSense</a>, <a href="http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Android+Market?hl=en">Android Market</a>, <a href="http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Google+Apps?hl=en">Google Apps</a>, <a href="http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Chrome?hl=en">Google Chrome</a> and most of our <a href="http://www.google.com/support/forum/?hl=pl">Polish products</a> -- have already switched to this system. Over the next several months, we'll convert more product Help Forums, initially in English and then in other languages.<br /><br />If you have a question, bug report, suggestion, or just want to mix and mingle, we welcome you to "stop by" our forums. Googlers will check in from time to time to answer questions, listen to feedback, and highlight great responses and the people who provided them.<br /><br /><span class="byline-author">Posted by Katina Johnson, Google Help Team</span>

New Google Help Forums

For the last few years, the Google Help Forums have been a great gathering place for users, developers, and anyone else who has an opinion about Google or its products. We've been taking stock of what…

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The art of the field study

I'm Dan Russell, a member of the Search Quality team doing user experience research. This post is part of our <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/search/label/search%20quality">ongoing series</a> to talk about the Search Quality team at Google, showing a bit of what we do in the day-to-day course of improving the quality of the user experience.<br /><br />The role of "user experience" research is to try and get the inside story on what people do when they search. We're constantly asking: What's the user's experience of search? What works and doesn't work for them? What are they looking for? What DO they want?<br /><br />To understand the full richness and variety of what people do when they are using Google, we spend many hours in the field, watching people search and listening to what they say as they do this. We hear it when they're happy, and when they're terribly frustrated. And perhaps most importantly, we also pay attention to the things they don't say -- the inexpressible "gotchas" that slow users down or get in the way of their search.<br /><br />It turns out that people are masters of saying one thing and doing another, particularly when it comes to nearly automatic behavior. We find that searchers often turn so quickly to Google that they don't really think too much about what they're actually searching for. It's surprising, but often we'll see people trying to find out something about a topic, but then never actually mention the topic itself. That is, there's often a big discrepancy between what they'll tell me (the human observer) they're trying to do, and the search terms they enter into Google. One person I shadowed for the day spent ten minutes trying to find the schedule of the ferry that runs between San Francisco and Larkspur, but somehow only thought of adding the word "ferry" much later in their search.<br /><br />We also study eye tracking. The eye makes a complex scan path over the search results, building up a composite picture of what is presented on the page. It's clear that what actually happens is a very rapid scan and assessment of each result as they are seen. In those milliseconds between the eye landing on the first fixation and seeing a few results, all kinds of decisions and choices are made--nearly all of them subconsciously.<br /><br />In this short video, you can see three different searchers all looking for the same thing (in this case, a child's backpack). The red dot is the searcher's gaze moving around on the search results page. Notice how methodically the gaze moves from result title to title, occasionally inspecting the snippet text to gain more detail about the result.<br /><br /><object height="344" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/bZ5Be93RTeY&hl=en&fs=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/bZ5Be93RTeY&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" height="344" width="425"></embed></object><span style="font-size:85%;"><br />(Video courtesy of Kerry Rodden) </span><br /><br />So the job of figuring out what people actually do when they search isn't as simple as asking someone what they search for during the day. It's basically impossible to give an accurate telling of what you saw (or didn't see) on the results page while actively searching for a high quality results.<br /><br />Memories of your own behavior are also notoriously unreliable. People's search behavior in the lab is often different than when they're at home or at work. This is a natural (and expected) side effect of lab studies: people will work especially hard to please a researcher. If we ask them to search for a pair of brown shoes they'd like to buy for themselves, in the lab they'll find the first pair that seems reasonable and then stop, satisfied. If it was real, they would go on and spend more time. We still do lab studies, but we know what to watch for, and what to ignore.<br /><br />Data from field studies gives us insight into how people respond to the Google experience in ways that we can't otherwise measure.<br /><br />For instance, in several field studies we discovered that many of the people who went to the previous version of the Advanced Search page had a strong, almost visceral negative reaction when the page appeared. The text of the original page had language that many people saw as intimidating--words like "Domain," "Usage Rights" and "Safe Search" can be a bit much if you're not sure what they mean.<br /><br />The old Advanced Search page <span style="font-style: italic;">was</span> a little off-putting (click on the image to see a larger version):<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheW61EfyCXnPcXef902wlidfZMatVZqxSFSyDUp3p0b-z-9OkJuXzM4HzUsyYu3LnWZE-auWL8oMlh8G1kgnyNmko8qbT85kuUj5RPyMzSjUki3RaBvKozXr2aTEZrSYiMIWM_Nf_JM-w5/s1600-h/Google-adv-search.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5265610667405350274" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheW61EfyCXnPcXef902wlidfZMatVZqxSFSyDUp3p0b-z-9OkJuXzM4HzUsyYu3LnWZE-auWL8oMlh8G1kgnyNmko8qbT85kuUj5RPyMzSjUki3RaBvKozXr2aTEZrSYiMIWM_Nf_JM-w5/s1600/Google-adv-search.jpg" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 525px;" /></a><br />Based on our field studies, we dug more deeply into how people were actually using our Advanced Search page, and quickly discovered that, indeed, a large number of users were going to the page, and then leaving it without ever filling in any of the slots.<br /><br />Armed with this insight from field studies, we redesigned the page, simplifying it by removing terms that were unclear to the average user (the word "occurrences," for example, just didn't mean anything to many of the Advanced Search page users), moving rarely used features (numeric range searches, date searches, etc.) into a part of the page that was expandable with a single click. That made them easy to get to for people who knew they wanted to search with those restrictions, but out of the way in a non-threatening way.<br /><br />One of the other things we noted in the field study was that people often didn't understand how the Advanced Search page worked. So we added a "visible query builder" region at the top of the page. As you fill in the blanks, the box at the top of the page fills in with the query that you could type into Google. It was our way of making visible the effects of advanced search operators.<br /><br />The Advanced Search page post-redesign (click on the image to see a larger version):<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0CkUiPUDgpsAWsbrmnpIjkcNaS-hQ217KKpW4bBtou2Hk6ZP2Mef4hU7C38yXShRRoxnpbCx9V_BeRPnwPUn8XIvEGdVGRR8Qbj2fMpLHSjWG-rq2cHHBxoDlRCqTbWlS6f9tEoz61Qlv/s1600-h/Google-adv-search-Oct-2008.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5265611107869300194" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0CkUiPUDgpsAWsbrmnpIjkcNaS-hQ217KKpW4bBtou2Hk6ZP2Mef4hU7C38yXShRRoxnpbCx9V_BeRPnwPUn8XIvEGdVGRR8Qbj2fMpLHSjWG-rq2cHHBxoDlRCqTbWlS6f9tEoz61Qlv/s1600/Google-adv-search-Oct-2008.jpg" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 525px;" /></a><br />The good effect of these changes quickly became clear. The number of users that bounced out of the Advanced Search page dropped significantly. Interestingly, the total number of Advanced Search page users didn't increase significantly... at least not yet. By improving the UI on the page, we hope to attract even more searchers to the large range of search options available on Google.<br /><br />In the end, this example shows the kind of insights that field studies can bring. As with the eye-tracking example, asking someone about their emotional response to a web page just isn't a useful way to get that data. But watching them <span style="font-style: italic;">in situ</span>, as they actually use Google to go about their daily search lives can reveal all kinds of remarkable, otherwise undiscoverable, and actionable insights into searcher behavior.<br /><br /><span class="byline-author">Posted by Daniel Russell, Uber Tech Lead, Search Quality</span>

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The art of the field study

I'm Dan Russell, a member of the Search Quality team doing user experience research. This post is part of our ongoing series to talk about the Search Quality team at Google, showing a bit of what we d…

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Now, read us in gadget form

Our corporate blog network is more than four years old now. We offer blogs about Google products and initiatives, local blogs (for 11 countries), blogs for advertisers and publishers, and a stable of blogs for developers. We hope you find the contents to be informative, timely, and, on occasion, fun.<br /><br />To help you keep track of our news and updates more easily, we've created a new <a href="http://www.google.com/press/blogs/directory.html#tab0">Blog Directory</a> (which links from the main page on this blog) and an <a href="http://www.google.com/ig/directory?url=www.google.com/ig/modules/google_blogs.xml" id="l5ai" title="iGoogle gadget">iGoogle gadget</a> so you can stay current right from your dashboard. If you'd prefer to read recent posts by category, install our <a title="iGoogle blog tab" href="http://www.google.com/ig/sharetab?source=stb&stid=102061219724857587790604ad50a1f9dd77039d0ff5a68b4a300&bpig=1" id="n4p3">iGoogle blog tab</a> (the customizable tab will load upon clicking), which will always show you the most recent blog updates by categories such as 'Open Source,' 'Mobile' or 'Publishers.' There are 16 categories, so you can pick and choose which ones to keep on your page after adding.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3ON3hgneWLZtgVRMIlJLlJdUBflXoOJCtmzpf72ehhHpdvWTsLM0OiAuqYopZL87Wyo8EVL90RGy5NduGZz1MPmPbFgxawn8-nFbKjg_S-4J8PTkUniVOXbA6qLR9Zs7uwCiJ2hwE1ux4/s1600-h/directory_menu.gif"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5247514859063189906" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3ON3hgneWLZtgVRMIlJLlJdUBflXoOJCtmzpf72ehhHpdvWTsLM0OiAuqYopZL87Wyo8EVL90RGy5NduGZz1MPmPbFgxawn8-nFbKjg_S-4J8PTkUniVOXbA6qLR9Zs7uwCiJ2hwE1ux4/s320/directory_menu.gif" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" /></a>Software engineer Derek Collison built the gadget using the <a href="http://code.google.com/apis/ajax/" id="sm8i" title="AJAX APIs">AJAX APIs</a>. The current version is in beta; we plan to use the <a href="http://code.google.com/apis/ajaxlanguage/" id="yp4m" title="Language API">Language API</a> to roll out translations for the blogs in 13 languages other than English and add new interface and navigation options. Developer Ben Lisbakken built the tab, and webmaster extraordinaire Champika Fernando built the directory with help from graphic designer Ryan Germick. A heartfelt thanks for all of their contributions in making our blog family more 'universally accessible and useful.'<br /><br /><span class="byline-author">Posted by Joscelin Cooper, Google Blog team</span>

Now, read us in gadget form

Our corporate blog network is more than four years old now. We offer blogs about Google products and initiatives, local blogs (for 11 countries), blogs for advertisers and publishers, and a stable of …

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What comes next in this series? 13, 33, 53, 61, 37, 28...

<span class="byline-author">Posted by Marissa Mayer, VP Search Products & User Experience</span><br /><br />Late one night in the summer of 2000, I found myself answering user support emails in response to two new features we had just released, Advanced Search and Preferences (at the time catchily called "Language, Display, and Filtering Options" :)). Busy crafting answers about how to set Safesearch or change the number of results offered by default, I worked my way through the email queue. And then I saw it: The next email had just a number ("37") in the subject - and no message text. What a weird form of spam, I thought. Why would anyone be motivated to just send a number? I searched for the user's email address to see what else had been sent. Interesting. Lots of numbers: 33, 53, and then a clue: "61, getting a bit heavy, aren't we?" Furthermore, the date on each of the messages seemed very familiar. Then I realized that's because the dates were all days that I had launched various changes on the homepage. "Getting a bit heavy?" - that one did correspond to one of the wordiest homepage releases we had ever done. Could the sender be counting words? Sure enough, I looked back, counted the words myself, and he was - a manual, human version of a scale for the Google homepage. He was weighing our homepage and letting us know when it was getting too heavy. One of his earliest mails had a note in the body: "What happened to the days of 13?" - referring to the word count on the initial 1999 homepage.<br /><br />This mystery and its revelation was really interesting because I thought about the homepage, and how to keep it simple, all the time. Yet I hadn't thought to look at it through this very simple lens: just count the words. The fewer, the better. Ever since that night, this has been our discipline, and everyone who works on the homepage and its design knows the current number: 28. (That's the word count for the basic page if you are signed out, there's no promotional line running beneath the search box, you've set Google as your homepage and thus don't get the "Make Google Your Homepage!" link, and you count "©2008 Google" as two words.)<br /><br />So, today we're making a homepage change by adding a link to our privacy overview and policies. Google values our users' privacy first and foremost. Trust is the basis of everything we do, so we want you to be familiar and comfortable with the integrity and care we give your personal data. We added this link both to our homepage and to our results page to make it easier for you to find information about our privacy principles. The new "Privacy" link goes to our Privacy Center, which was revamped earlier this year to be more straightforward and approachable, with videos and a non-legalese overview to make sure you understand in basic terms what Google does, does not, will, and won't, do in regard to your personal information.<br /><br />How does privacy relate to homepage word count? Larry and Sergey told me we could only add this to the homepage if we took a word away - keeping the "weight" of the homepage unchanged at 28. Given that the new Privacy link fit best with legal disclaimers on the page, I looked to the copyright line. There, we dropped the word "Google" (realizing it was implied, obviously) and added the new privacy link alongside it.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhheI1hqEAozhnspac5k1uiUO5zHFjaGpJpXr_my5jqwxNZGeEuxW10g-5Ir7tbC9B6_z-hFKpRk_VgylZI0paAshlmBu1XEBSPuizhRdbW17ht194_pPxwLDNeOVj7YerkTLajL7ynVJCQ/s1600-h/blogpost.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5218887618314035170" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhheI1hqEAozhnspac5k1uiUO5zHFjaGpJpXr_my5jqwxNZGeEuxW10g-5Ir7tbC9B6_z-hFKpRk_VgylZI0paAshlmBu1XEBSPuizhRdbW17ht194_pPxwLDNeOVj7YerkTLajL7ynVJCQ/s1600/blogpost.jpg" style="margin: 0px auto 0px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" /></a><br /><br />We think the easy access to our privacy information without any added homepage heft is a clear win for our users and an enhancement to your experience. You can <a title="check out the new Privacy Center here" href="http://www.google.com/privacy.html" id="dvb2">check out the new Privacy Center here</a>.

What comes next in this series? 13, 33, 53, 61, 37, 28...

Posted by Marissa Mayer, VP Search Products & User ExperienceLate one night in the summer of 2000, I found myself answering user support emails in response to two new features we had just released, Ad…

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What makes a design "Googley"?

<span class="byline-author">Posted by Sue Factor, Writer, User Experience Group</span><br /><br />Late in 2007, our User Experience (UX) group—which does user interface design, visual design, user research, web development, and user interface writing<span id="x53t">—set out to articulate </span>the principles that ought to guide Google designs worldwide. What are the fundamentals that all Google designers and researchers accept? Which approaches to design are particularly "Googley"? How can we encourage teams throughout Google to dream big and make smart design decisions?<br /><br />A small team gathered to discuss these questions and define the Googley <a href="http://www.google.com/corporate/ux.html">Design Principles</a>:<br /><blockquote>1. Focus on people—their lives, their work, their dreams.<br />2. Every millisecond counts.<br />3. Simplicity is powerful.<br />4. Engage beginners and attract experts.<br />5. Dare to innovate.<br />6. Design for the world.<br />7. Plan for today's and tomorrow's business.<br />8. Delight the eye without distracting the mind.<br />9. Be worthy of people's trust.<br />10. Add a human touch.</blockquote>These UX principles flow naturally from the <a href="http://www.google.com/corporate/tenthings.html" id="kg-w" target="_blank" title="Ten things Google has found to be true">Ten things Google has found to be true</a> and the UX group's stated mission: to design products that satisfy and delight our users. We described the principles as "Our Aspirations" for two reasons:<br /><ul><li>We have a lot of work to do when it comes to implementation.</li><li>Every real-world product will have to strike a balance between all ten principles.</li></ul>Still, we don't want to waffle too much. These principles represent the User Experience group's declaration of beliefs. With "Satisfy and Delight" stitched on our leotards, we're determined to get up on the tightrope and start juggling principles. Please applaud or boo, as appropriate, so that we can make the next act even better.

What makes a design "Googley"?

Posted by Sue Factor, Writer, User Experience GroupLate in 2007, our User Experience (UX) group—which does user interface design, visual design, user research, web development, and user interface writ…

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Three more languages for Blogger

<span class="byline-author">Posted by Tyrone Nicholas, Software Engineer</span><br /><br />Millions of people around the world already use <a title="Blogger" href="http://www.blogger.com/" id="gza.">Blogger</a> to participate in the wider Internet community. Blogging is a powerful way for people to publish online, reach a large and varied audience, and communicate with others who share their interests. And today, Blogger is available in Arabic, Persian, and Hebrew. This brings the number of languages we offer to 40. We've been really excited about adding these languages and widening the world of bloggers.<br /><br />We're especially pleased that Blogger now supports composing text and displaying blogs right to left. This has long been an challenge for bloggers in Hebrew, Persian, and Arabic. We've added <a title="Blogger Buzz" href="http://buzz.blogger.com/2008/01/three-new-languages-and-whole-new.html" id="a6:0">new features</a> specifically for these users, and also made sure every page of the Blogger application displays right-to-left in these languages. This project has been very technically challenging, but among the most thrilling I've ever worked on. I hope that everyone enjoys using it as much as I've enjoyed developing it.

Three more languages for Blogger

Posted by Tyrone Nicholas, Software EngineerMillions of people around the world already use Blogger to participate in the wider Internet community. Blogging is a powerful way for people to publish onl…

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Speaking in more languages

<span class="byline-author">Posted by Vlad Patryshev, software engineer</span><br /><br />Many Google products (<a href="http://www.google.com/">Google.com</a>, <a href="http://www.blogger.com/">Blogger</a>, <a href="http://earth.google.com/">Google Earth</a>, and others) currently support more than 170 languages, from Abhazian to Zulu. Translations into most of these languages are done by volunteers from around the world who are eager to help people view and search the web in their own native language. To facilitate how we go about getting these languages, we created a volunteer translation program: <a href="http://www.google.com/transconsole">Google In Your Language</a>.<br /><br />Anybody can sign up as a volunteer translator by visiting the <a href="http://www.google.com/language_tools?hl=en"> Language Tools</a> page and then clicking on the <a href="http://www.google.com/transconsole">Google in Your Language link</a>. After verification, you'll be offered a list of products to translate, including the main search site, Gmail, iGoogle, Google Maps, and many others<br /><br />Although the amount of translation for each project is not overwhelming, it usually takes weeks for an individual volunteer to finish translating one site. Once a reasonable percentage of translations for Google pages in a given language is submitted, we'll add your language to production and, after a bit of time, you'll be able to see them in yet another language.<br /><br />Some "volunteer" languages are well represented and are nearly finished being translated, i.e. Armenian, Estonian, Slovenian are 95% complete; even Latin has 70% of its translations done. Representatives of other languages are not as active, i.e. Abhazian has been available for several years, but so far we don't have enough translations completed to release it into production. Tibetan, Inupak, Inuktikut, Wolof, Zhuang all have less than 10% of their content translated. Interestingly, each of those has more speakers than Faroese, which has 74% of texts translated.<br /><br />Recently we have added a bunch of new languages to the Google In Your Language program, including Navajo, Filipino, several Russian Federation languages (Avaric, Chechen, Chuvash, Komi), and some African languages (Akan, Bambara, Gikuyu, Kongo, Ndebele, Ndongo, Nyanja, Venda). Our hope is to attract even more volunteers to participate in this program so that Google can speak all the world's languages one day.

Speaking in more languages

Posted by Vlad Patryshev, software engineerMany Google products (Google.com, Blogger, Google Earth, and others) currently support more than 170 languages, from Abhazian to Zulu. Translations into most…

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Lights, camera, Gmail

<span class="byline-author">Posted by Bill Kee, Associate Product Marketing Manager</span><br /><br />Last month, we <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/07/like-making-videos-love-gmail.html" id="d4i0" title="invited you">invited you</a> to join the Gmail collaborative video, pull out your video cameras and help us imagine how an email message travels around the world. Two <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZIgdq9dp2M" id="ufek" title="Rubik's">Rubik's</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEhhzJB3n00" id="xy:r" title="cubes">cubes</a>, a few jaunts <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKeD4J70jqM" id="djq9" title="in a bottle">in a bottle</a>, beautiful <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFQdGkFZcE4" id="lqs1" title="sand animation">sand animation</a>, and one <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULwrZ22FJF8" id="ualc" title="dog's trip">dog's trip</a> to the Southernmost point of the continental US later, we'd received more than <span style="color:#3333ff;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/video_response_view_all?v=VfDW7qAdFGk" id="c41." title="1,100 fantastic clips">1,100 fantastic clips</a></span> from Gmail fans from <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">more than 65 </span>countries. It was impossible to fit all of the great submissions into one cut, but after hours of fun watching <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OuEAjqyQ2qM" id="wudp" title="jugglers">jugglers</a>, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0QlJJ_aF-E" id="aa1j" title="firemen">firemen</a>, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKX82dsXWew" id="ly:n" title="camel-riders">camel-riders</a>, and original <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIvQMk4k6JU" id="o151" title="animation">animation</a>, we edited highlights together into this video and used the <a href="http://www.google.com/apis/maps/index.html" id="m.lo" title="Google Maps API">Google Maps API</a> to put together a map showing where many of the clips came from (you can also see these at <a href="http://mail.google.com/mvideo" id="g332" title="http://mail.google.com/mvideo">http://mail.google.com/mvideo</a>):<br /><br /><span style="color:#ff0000;"><object height="353" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/qKAInP_tmHk"><param name="wmode" value="transparent"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/qKAInP_tmHk" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" height="353" width="425"></embed></object></span><br /><span style="color:#ff0000;"><br /></span><span style="color:#ff0000;"><iframe width="95%" height="400" frameborder="no" scrolling="no" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" src="http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=pl&geocode=&q=http:%2F%2Fservices.google.com%2Fearth%2Fmvideo.kml&ie=UTF8&om=1&t=k&s=AARTsJoT5oBjk9IHzTkEDj634yygZbvLFQ&ll=31.952162,-36.914062&spn=105.832053,158.203125&z=2&output=embed"></iframe><br/><a href="http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=pl&geocode=&q=http:%2F%2Fservices.google.com%2Fearth%2Fmvideo.kml&ie=UTF8&om=1&t=k&ll=31.952162,-36.914062&spn=105.832053,158.203125&z=2&source=embed" style="color:#0000FF;text-align:left;font-size:small">View Larger Map</a></span><span style="color:#ff0000;"><br /><br /></span> A big thank you to everyone who participated -- your creativity is astounding!

Lights, camera, Gmail

Posted by Bill Kee, Associate Product Marketing ManagerLast month, we invited you to join the Gmail collaborative video, pull out your video cameras and help us imagine how an email message travels ar…

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Feeds on a plane!

<span class="byline-author">Posted by Chris Wetherell, Software Engineer</span><br /><br />With last week's launch of <a href="http://gears.google.com/">Google Gears</a>, we're happy to let you know that <a href="http://reader.google.com/">Google Reader</a> is the first Google web application made for online and offline viewing. If you're not familiar with Google Reader, it's a feed reader for getting updates from your favorite blogs and news sites.<br /><br />Now, you can read these updates whether you're on or offline. It's easy to read today's financial news from the <i>New York Times</i> on the train, or catch up on your favorite blog while on a plane 35,000 ft. above the Atlantic.<br /><br />Once you've installed Google Gears, you can download your latest 2,000 items so they're available even when you don't have an Internet connection. <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Ap14FtNN91w/Rmc12qOTHFI/AAAAAAAAAIM/-gzSt6vZMh8/s1600-h/Reader_feeds.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5073082718419622994" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Ap14FtNN91w/Rmc12qOTHFI/AAAAAAAAAIM/-gzSt6vZMh8/s320/Reader_feeds.jpg" style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" /></a><br /><br />To get started, simply click the "Offline" link in the top right of Google Reader.<br /><br />Please note, though, that the current version of Google Gears is a developer release, which means you may notice a few kinks here and there. We'll be working hard to iron those out over the coming months, and as always, we welcome your <a href="http://groups.google.com/group/Google-Labs-Reader">feedback and suggestions</a> as we look to make Google Reader better every day.

Feeds on a plane!

Posted by Chris Wetherell, Software EngineerWith last week's launch of Google Gears, we're happy to let you know that Google Reader is the first Google web application made for online and offline view…

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Putting users in charge

<span class="byline-author">Posted by Peter Fleischer, Global Privacy Counsel</span><br /><br />I just wrote <a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/560c6a06-0a63-11dc-93ae-000b5df10621.html">an opinion piece</a> for the <span style="font-style: italic;">Financial Times</span> on the future of search in relation to personalization. It's about what we believe to be the value of personalized search, especially when you yourself can control the level of personalization. Hope you enjoy reading it.

Putting users in charge

Posted by Peter Fleischer, Global Privacy CounselI just wrote an opinion piece for the Financial Times on the future of search in relation to personalization. It's about what we believe to be the valu…

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Calendar for mobile devices

<span class="byline-author">Posted by Devesh Parekh, Software Engineer, Google Calendar team</span><br /><br />We realize that more people in the world have mobile phones than have computers, and people take their cell phones with them everywhere. Since one of our main goals on the Calendar team is to make planning your events and maintaining your schedule as easy as possible, starting today, you can access your Google Calendar account from your cell phone!<br /><br />Just visit <a href="http://www.google.com/calendar/m">calendar.google.com</a> from your phone, and you'll see your agenda of upcoming events, complete with details like date, time, location, description, and guest list.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnmKCILa58adb_UbkOB-BiJK0Xc-u2LsYaeXU9bzhvSGPHC3nkNWv8TB-X4sgEX8KojIcd9fofAVRBkixmQtwVM26XYjJbNZaSH6YLEs8wbda3W1igTpom1WKpEXWpZaq0MYqy9vRIvNfY/s1600-h/Mobile+Cal+image.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5067567820348311282" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnmKCILa58adb_UbkOB-BiJK0Xc-u2LsYaeXU9bzhvSGPHC3nkNWv8TB-X4sgEX8KojIcd9fofAVRBkixmQtwVM26XYjJbNZaSH6YLEs8wbda3W1igTpom1WKpEXWpZaq0MYqy9vRIvNfY/s320/Mobile+Cal+image.jpg" style="cursor: pointer;" /></a>

Calendar for mobile devices

Posted by Devesh Parekh, Software Engineer, Google Calendar teamWe realize that more people in the world have mobile phones than have computers, and people take their cell phones with them everywhere.…

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Cingular BlackBerry 8800 has Google Maps and GPS

<span class="byline-author">Posted by Steve Lee, Product Manager, Google Maps for mobile</span><br /><br />Some of us have a great sense of direction, and others find themselves, well, a little lost at times. For those in the latter camp, you can thank Cingular for launching the <a href="http://business.cingular.com/businesscenter/blackberry8800/?_requestid=182418%22onClick=%22javascript:urchinTracker%28%27/outgoing/cingular_com%27">BlackBerry® 8800</a>, the latest open GPS-enabled device from a major U.S. carrier. That means that when you use <a title="outbind://91-00000000539B9334C130484888F4AC5FF1F4342E04748000/www.google.com/gmm/gps?utm_source=en-et-blog&utm_medium=et&utm_source=en" href="http://www.google.com/gmm/gps.html?utm_source=en-et-blog&utm_medium=et&utm_source=en">Google Maps for mobile</a>, your location automatically shows up on the map.<br /><br />When you download Google Maps for mobile and fire it up, you'll notice something quite unusual: a blinking blue dot showing you exactly where you are! You can use your auto-detected location to get directions and perform local searches without even entering your location -- instead of "pizza 94043", just enter "pizza" -- and we'll automatically know you want pizza in the zip code "94043."<br /><br />So here's a great big hats off to Cingular -- this BlackBerry® 8800 with GPS is awesome!

Cingular BlackBerry 8800 has Google Maps and GPS

Posted by Steve Lee, Product Manager, Google Maps for mobileSome of us have a great sense of direction, and others find themselves, well, a little lost at times. For those in the latter camp, you can …

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What's hot today?

<span class="byline-author">Posted by Corey Vickrey, Software Engineer</span><br /><br />For more than six years, we have compiled a regular list of popular searches called the <a href="http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html">Google Zeitgeist</a>. This has been our way to highlight the sorts of queries people type into the Google search box every day. More recently, we unveiled <a href="http://www.google.com/trends">Google Trends</a> to show the popularity of search terms in relation to each other overtime, and how different cities or regions may care (or not) about the trends.<br /><br />And today we're introducing a new toy we are calling <a href="http://www.google.com/trends/hottrends">Hot Trends</a>. It's a new feature of Google Trends for sharing the the hottest current searches with you in very close to real time. What's on our collective mind as we search for information? What's interesting to people right now? Hot Trends will tell you. At a glance, you'll see the huge variety of topics capturing our attention, from current events to daily crossword puzzle clues to the latest celebrity gossip. Hot Trends is updated throughout the day, so check back often.<br /><br />For each Hot Trend, you will see results from Google News, Google Blog Search and web search, which help explain why the search is hot. For example, the <a href="http://www.google.com/trends/hottrends?q=creed+thoughts&date=2007-5-17">#7 item on Thursday, May 17th</a> was the cryptic phrase [creed thoughts]. The associated news stories and blog results show that this odd term is the name of a fake website mentioned on the season finale of <span style="font-style: italic;">The Office</span>. Mystery solved. Of course, some searches are not as easily explained. Visit the <a href="http://groups.google.com/group/google-trends-hot-trends">Hot Trends group</a> to read the explanations of others and offer your own.<br /><br />If you want to look further back, you can also see what queries were hot on a particular day. On Wednesday, May 16th, [<a href="http://www.google.com/trends/hottrends?q=melinda+doolittle&date=2007-5-16&sa=X">melinda doolittle</a>], [<a href="http://www.google.com/trends/hottrends?q=halo+3+beta&date=2007-5-16&sa=X">halo 3 beta</a>], and [<a href="http://www.google.com/trends/hottrends?q=ge+dishwasher+recall&date=2007-5-16&sa=X">ge dishwasher recall</a>] were on the Hot Trends list. If you don't know why, maybe you'll learn something.<br /><br />Hot Trends aren't the search terms people look for most often -- those are pretty predictable, like [weather] or [games] or perhaps [myspace]. Yes, [sex] too. Instead, the Hot Trends algorithm analyzes millions of searches to find those that are deviating the most relative to their past traffic. And the outcome is the Hot Trends list.<br /><br />In addition to Hot Trends, we've updated Google Trends so that it's easier to use and, we hope, more useful to you. In addition to viewing the top search terms by country and city, you can view the top "subregions" (e.g. states within the U.S.) across more than 70 countries. You can now compare the leading <a href="http://www.google.com/trends?q=hillary+clinton%2C+rudy+giuliani%2C+barack+obama%2C+john+mccain">presidential candidates</a> around the country, for instance, or find out which states have the worst <a href="http://www.google.com/trends?q=mosquitoes&ctab=0&geo=US">mosquito problems</a>.<br /><br />With the release of Hot Trends, we're retiring the weekly Zeitgest list, but we will still compile monthly lists for each country, and will continue our annual year-end roll-ups too.<br /><br />Hot Trends is currently available only in English, but we hope to release international versions in the future.

What's hot today?

Posted by Corey Vickrey, Software EngineerFor more than six years, we have compiled a regular list of popular searches called the Google Zeitgeist. This has been our way to highlight the sorts of quer…

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Behind the scenes with universal search

<span class="byline-author">Posted by David Bailey, Tech Lead, and Johanna Wright, Product Manager, universal search</span><br /><br />So when we were asked to make the vision <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/05/universal-search-best-answer-is-still.html">Marissa describes</a> about universal search into a reality, we admit we were a little daunted. Googlers had tried before to do this without success -- several times. Finding the best answer across multiple content types is a well-known hard problem in the search field. Besides that, we wondered if we had become too big a company to pull off a project this complex.<br /><br />Here's the challenge in a nutshell: Until now, we've only been able to show news, books, local and other such results at the top of the page, like this example for [<a href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=trends+in+education+&btnG=Google+Search">trends in education</a>]. But it's a tall order to earn placement at the top of our search results, so plenty often we end up not showing these kinds of results even when they might be useful. If only we could smartly place such results elsewhere on the page when they don't quite deserve the top, we could share the benefits of these great Google features with people much more often.<br /><br />One challenge was being able to regularly search through all of the additional content types to find relevant results. After all, you don't know if there might be a minor news story or an obscure book relevant to your query unless you go and check. But Google's massive compute cluster -- and much effort by our infrastructure experts -- gave us a leg up on that one, and we can now search these disparate types of information about as efficiently as we search our massive index of web pages. We may have melted down a data center or two along the way, but then bugs are part of life in this business!<br /><br />The next challenge was deciding when and where such results should blend in. Fortunately we have some of the world's experts on ranking, and have been able to apply the lessons learned on web search to ensure that we show news only for newsworthy queries, scanned books only when there aren't better web results, etc. It can be tricky. As we learned the hard way, just because everyone under the sun is writing about Anna Nicole Smith doesn't mean news about her should show up for the search [baby names].<br /><br />Lastly, we faced the challenge of the user interface you see on the screen -- the UI. The new UI for these results is subtle, but this is one reason why the project is fun for our designers and usability experts: they get to focus on creating a simple experience for you. For example, with news results they designed a compact look for the result that includes helpful items like an image and a date, but is limited to just the most salient information. Or take our book search results, which call out the author and number of pages in the book. (Of course, we learned that sometimes you don't even need to design a user interface. In one early usability study, shortly after Barry Bonds broke Babe Ruth's home run record, we asked people "how many home runs has Barry Bonds hit?" hoping they would type [barry bonds] into the search box. Instead, each and every one simply blurted out "715".)<br /><br />We also called on experts from each of our feature areas such as News and Local, and were delighted to find our startup mindset is alive and well. Folks from all over found spare time and pitched in to get us to the finish line. There were many nights when we went to bed knowing that plenty of the team's IM status still reported they were online.<br /><br />And after all this elbow grease, finally we have something that works. What does it mean for you?<br /><br />Although it's just a beginning, this first pass of universal search focuses on video, news, local and books. Now you'll be able to get more information Google knows about directly from within the search results. You won't have to know about specialized areas of content. If you're looking for the [<a href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=atkins+southwestern+pork+fajitas&btnG=Search">atkins southwestern pork fajitas</a>] recipe, we can now link you right to that page in the book. Or if, like me, you've been busy these past few days and have not caught up with your Tivo, don't type [<a href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=sopranos&btnG=Search">sopranos</a>] into Google, because our news result will be a giant spoiler. The search for [<a href="http://www.google.com/search?aq=t&oq=rachmaninoff+concerto+&hl=en&q=rachmaninoff+concerto+3">rachmaninoff concerto 3</a>] includes a video of Vladimir Horowitz performing this piece (scroll down to see it), and [<a href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Animator+vs.+Animation+2&btnG=Search">Animator vs. Animation 2</a>] is pretty cool as well. (And as Johanna notes: I was delighted to see that when querying for my son's name a video showed up too.)<br /><br />This is just the tip of the iceberg in making Google results more comprehensive and useful. It has involved launching a number of new systems that will make it much easier for us to continue making improvements so you get the most relevant information from our varied content areas. We hope you like it. And finally, we're especially happy to know that Google is still very much a place where we can get big things done!

Behind the scenes with universal search

Posted by David Bailey, Tech Lead, and Johanna Wright, Product Manager, universal searchSo when we were asked to make the vision Marissa describes about universal search into a reality, we admit we we…

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Universal search: The best answer is still the best answer

<span class="byline-author">Posted by Marissa Mayer, VP Search Products & User Experience</span><br /><br />Back in 2001, Eric asked for a brainstorm of a few "splashy" ideas in search. A designer and product manager at the time, I made a few mockups -- one of which was for 'universal search.' It was a sample search results page for Britney Spears that, in addition to web results, also had news, images, and groups results right on the same page. Even then, we could see that people could easily become overwhelmed with the number of different search tools available on Google -- let alone those that would be created over the next few years. This proliferation of tools, while useful, has outgrown the old model of search. We want to help you find the very best answer, even if you don't know where to look.<br /><br />That mockup and early observations were the motivation behind the universal search effort we announced earlier today. And while that Britney Spears mockup was the start of Google's universal search vision, it was instantly obvious that this would be one of the biggest architectural, ranking, and interface challenges we would face at Google. Over several years, with the help of more than 100 people, we've built the infrastructure, search algorithms, and presentation mechanisms to provide what we see as just the first step in the evolution toward universal search. Today, we're making that first step available on google.com by launching the new architecture and using it to blend content from Images, Maps, Books, Video, and News into our web results.<br /><br />With universal search, we're attempting to break down the walls that traditionally separated our various search properties and integrate the vast amounts of information available into one simple set of search results.<br /><br />Here are a few of my favorite searches that show off the power of universal search:<br /><ul><li><a href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=+steve+jobs&btnG=Search">steve jobs</a></li><li><a href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=darth+vader&btnG=Search">darth vader</a></li><li><a href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=nosferatu&btnG=Search">nosferatu</a></li></ul>In addition, we've rolled out a few new navigation elements and experimental features to help our users better navigate our site and find the information they're looking for. These include contextual navigation links above the search results that help users "drill down" to specific types of information. For instance, developers who search for [<a href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=python&btnG=Search">python</a>] will see links for "web," "blogs," "books," "groups," and "code," whereas [<a href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=downtown+los+angeles&btnG=Search">downtown los angeles</a>] will show a different set of links. Also, in terms of integration and navigation, today we introduced a new universal navigation bar at the top of all Google web pages to provide easier navigation to your favorite Google products, such as Gmail.<br /><br />While today's releases are big steps in making the world's information more easily accessible, these are just the beginning steps toward the universal search vision. Stay tuned!

Universal search: The best answer is still the best answer

Posted by Marissa Mayer, VP Search Products & User ExperienceBack in 2001, Eric asked for a brainstorm of a few "splashy" ideas in search. A designer and product manager at the time, I made a few mock…

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