This week in search 11/12/10

This is one of a regular series of posts on search experience updates. Look for the label This week in search and subscribe to the series. - Ed.

We’re always excited by the diversity of the search features and enhancements that we make in any given week. Each week we try to release a diverse set of search feature and enhancement to help you find what you’re looking for, faster. From getting sports information instantly, to making it even easier for you to find the right webpage, this week’s round up includes a slew of new changes.

NHL Live Result
Many of you are sports fans, and we’re always delighted to make improvements that help you find those scores, stats and recaps. We partnered with our friends at NHL.com to provide rich information in the snippets of the NHL.com results. These include real-time scores, schedules and team standings. They also include links for quick access to game previews, live streams, recaps and video highlights of completed games making it super-easy to keep up to date on the latest NHL action.

Example searches: [nhl], [rangers]


Help for those who need it
In times of crisis, it's especially important to find the crucial information you're looking for—and find it fast. After receiving positive feedback for poison control and suicide prevention special search features in the U.S., this week we launched one or more emergency search features in 13 countries: Australia, Belgium, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the U.K. For certain queries, the feature displays the phone number to call for poison emergencies, suicide prevention or general emergency services.

Instant Previews
This week we were excited to take the speed of Google Instant even further with the launch of Instant Previews in almost all languages and domains. Instant Previews is a new, interactive feature that helps you select the right results by showing you a preview of each page and highlighting the most relevant sections for your query. You can activate the feature with a single click on the magnifying glass next to the result title. The tool is fast and interactive, with the average preview appearing in under a tenth of a second.

Learn more about Instant Previews here.

We hope you enjoyed this week’s updates. You can check out some of the top searches of the week on our latest edition of Google Beat—stay tuned for more!

Posted by Johanna Wright, Director of Search Product Management