Plan your next trip with the new flight schedule feature

As summer approaches, you might be thinking about taking a vacation. One of the first things you might do is go online and start looking for flights. In fact, finding flights is one of the most popular online activities, so to make it a little easier to find results for your travel-related searches, you can now see a quick summary of flight information right on the results page.

See the flight schedule on a route

If you have a particular destination in mind, you can now quickly find out which airlines serve that specific route and when they fly. For example, if you search for [flights from san francisco to minneapolis], you’ll see a selection of non-stop flights and the airlines that offer them. To see a full timetable, click on “Schedule of non-stop flights.”

Explore all destinations from an airport
You can also see all the destinations with non-stop flights from a particular airport. If you’re in Buffalo, New York and need ideas for a weekend getaway, search for [flights from buffalo] to see popular travel destinations from Buffalo. By clicking "Show all non-stop routes," you can get the full list of destinations and from there, you can click to get more flight details.

This is currently available in 10 languages: English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Dutch, Brazilian Portuguese, Polish, Russian, Turkish, and Catalan.

With the close of our ITA acquisition last month, we’re eager to begin developing new flight search tools to make it easier for you to plan a trip. While this flight schedule feature does not currently use ITA’s search technology, this is just a small step towards making richer travel information easier to find, and we hope to make finding flights online feel so easy, it’ll feel like... well, a vacation!

Posted by Petter Wedum, Software Engineer

Read More

Social Search goes global

(Cross-posted from the Social Web Blog)

In 2009 we first introduced Social Search on google.com as an experimental feature designed to help you find more relevant information from your friends and the people you care about. Since then we’ve been making steady improvements to connect you with more people and more relevant web results. Today, we’re bringing Social Search to more users around the globe.

Just like on google.com, social search results in other languages and on other domains are mixed throughout the Google results page based on their relevance. For example, if you’re looking for information about low-light photography and your friend Marcin has written a blog post about it, that post may show up higher in your results with a clear annotation and picture of Marcin:

Social search results can rank anywhere on the page, and you’ll see who shared the result in the annotation underneath.

Social Search can help you find pages your friends have created, and it can also help you find links your contacts have shared on Twitter and other sites. If someone you’re connected to has publicly shared a link, we may show that link in your results with a clear annotation. So, if you’re looking for information about modern cooking and your colleague Adam shared a link about Modernist Cuisine, you’ll see an annotation and picture of Adam under the result. That way when you see Adam in the office, you’ll know he might be a good person to ask about his favorite modern cooking techniques.

Social Search includes links people share on Twitter and other services.

So how does this all work? Social search results are only visible to you and only appear when you choose to log in to your Google Account. If you’re signed in, Google makes a best guess about whose public content you may want to see in your results, including people from your Google Chat buddy list, your Google Contacts, the people you're following in Google Reader and Buzz, and the networks you’ve linked from your Google profile or Google Account. For public networks like Twitter, Google finds your friends and sees who they’re publicly connected to as well. You can see a complete list of the people included in your social search results in your personal Google Dashboard (this display is private). For an overview of Google Social Search, check out the explanatory video:

Click “cc” to see captions in your language.

Social Search is rolling out globally in 19 languages and should be available in the coming week, with more languages on the way. People around the world will find similar types of social results as people in the US, and we plan to introduce the +1 feature as soon as we can. With these changes, we want to help you find the most relevant information from the people who matter to you. To learn more about Social Search, check out our help center.

Posted by Yohann Coppel, Software Engineer

Read More

Introducing our official search blog

(Cross-posted on the Official Google Blog)

The thirst for knowledge is as old as humanity. It's only in the past decade that the Internet has made knowledge ubiquitous, and we want to help you find the answers you’re looking for, whether it’s the best price on a new microwave, where to find a great bike ride—or even information about the Internet itself.

Generally, we help you answer questions by refining our algorithms, but today we’re taking a slightly different approach: we’re starting a blog -- this blog -- “Inside Search.” Here you’ll find regular updates on our algorithms and features, as well as stories from the people who work to improve Google every day.

In the past we’ve published information about search on the Official Google Blog (more than 400 posts about search and more than 50 weekly wrap-ups), and webmaster-oriented posts on the Webmaster Central Blog (more than 300 posts). We also operate a help center for search and another for webmasters. That’s not to mention the search help forums which have more than 50,000 discussions, and the webmaster central help forums with more than 90,000. Combine this with YouTube channels and search conferences, and it’s safe to say we talk a lot about search.

Even with all these channels, we still felt we were missing something. We didn’t want to flood the Official Google Blog with smaller stories and announcements, and the Webmaster Central Blog is really meant for, well, webmasters. We started our series “This week in search” to provide a way to share information about some of the smaller updates we’re making, but we got feedback that people wanted their search news and information as it happens, not just weekly. So, we’re starting Inside Search as a place where you can find regular updates on the intricacies of search and our team. We have more engineers working on search than any other product, and each one of us has stories to tell.

A glimpse inside the weekly search "quality launches" meeting, during which we approve the roughly 500 improvements we make to search every year.

On behalf of the team, welcome!

Posted by Amit Singhal, Google Fellow

Read More