From devastation to empowerment and tragedy to hope, our 15th annual Year in Search uncovers the moments that captured the world’s hearts—and questions that revealed who we are. From “How can I help Nepal” to “How can the world find peace?” here’s a look back at 2015, through the lens of Google search.

Searching for ways to help
Within two minutes of the deadly attack on Paris in November, the French capital was searching for information on the assault underway in their city. Less than 10 minutes later, the rest of the world started searching. As of today, we’ve seen more than 897 million searches about the city as the world came together to “Pray for Paris.”

Global showings of support and offerings of help were a key topic in search this year. Following the Nepal earthquake, “how can I help Nepal?” was a top global search. From Somerville, Mass. to Ludwigsberg, Germany, people asked how to volunteer and what to donate.

Searching for perspective
While questions around Nepal were similar around the world, the migrant crisis in Europe spiked a wider variety of queries. From Italy asking “How to adopt a Syrian orphan child?” to Germany wondering “Where are the refugees coming from?” the world turned to Google to understand the situation and what it meant for them.

In the U.S., the topic of guns brought varying questions. From Portland, Ore. to Austin, Texas, people across the country searched for “what is gun control,” “why do we need gun control,” “why won’t gun control work” and more to understand the issue. With more than 160 million searches, interest in gun control spiked higher than interest for gun shops—typically a more popular search—at multiple points in 2015.

Searching for acceptance
In June, we met Caitlyn Jenner, someone we’d both always known and were meeting for the first time. Across the globe, she was searched more than 344 million times, and her story helped give a new voice to the transgender community.

People cheered “#lovewins” when the U.S. Supreme Court made a monumental ruling that gay marriages should be recognized at both the State and Federal level. The reaction was instant, with search interest in both same-sex marriage and the Supreme Court reaching higher than at any time in Google's history.

Searching for… the dress, the Force and the singer
Turning to the Search watercooler, the year began with the world divided over an important question: is it white and gold? or blue and black? Days of debate and 73 million searches later, “black and blue dress” topped searches of “white and gold dress,” and the matter was settled forever (right?).

And though “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” is just hitting theaters this week, it’s already taken the Internet by storm(trooper). The trailer alone garnered more than 155 million searches! But the all-time high for Google searches around “Star Wars” was in 2005 after “The Revenge of the Sith” came out in theaters—can we beat it this week?

Finally, what better way to close out the year than by saying “Hello”? With the debut of “25,” Adele broke records by the week, putting her album at the top of the charts and skyrocketing to the top of Google Search faster than any other musician this year.

Hundreds of stories in depth
The 2015 Year in Search goes deeper than we've ever gone before. This year, we’re covering hundreds of news stories, sharing interactive guides and charts, and diving into the numbers by sharing things like how many times people searched for Adele (439 million, if you want to know!).

See how all of the biggest stories of the year compared:

Go to Google.com/2015 to explore the rest of the 2015 Year in Search stories and top trending charts from around the world.

Posted by Amit Singhal, Senior Vice President, Search http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-szT0CpTrHss/VnEWdApFBxI/AAAAAAAARlU/L-tT2ireW74/s1600/YIS-Mars-Blog.jpg Amit Singhal Senior Vice President Search
The Official Google Blog

From matters of the heart to matters off the court, join us on a trip to a galaxy far, far away for our look back at this week's search trends.

Searching for romance
It’s the end of George as we know him. Saturday, word got out that longtime bachelor George Clooney was engaged to his girlfriend, Amal Alamuddin. Alamuddin is a respected human rights lawyer in Britain, but she’s not—or wasn’t—a household name, and many people turned to search to learn more about the woman who captured Clooney’s heart. While they were at it, they looked for information on actress Talia Balsam, who was married to George in the early 90’s (for those of you paying attention, that’s pre-Doug Ross!). In other celebrity couple news, Prince Harry and Cressida Bonas have reportedly broken up. So, if you’re disappointed that George is off the market, there’s still hope for women around the world wishing to marry a royal.

A historic week for the NBA
NBA commissioner Adam Silver made league history this week when he fined Clippers owner Donald Sterling and banned him from the league for recent comments. Millions of searches followed, and terms like [adam silver comments], [adam silver sterling], [adam sterling clippers] immediately climbed more than 1,000 percent.

The fetch is strong with this one
On Wednesday, we wore pink in celebration of the 10th anniversary of Tina Fey’s “Mean Girls.” The movie that gave us “fetch” was the subject of so many searches, quizzes (searches for [mean girls quiz] were up 350 percent) and retrospectives that even Cady Heron might have trouble adding them up. And though rumors of a [mean girls reunion] (up 850 percent) are apparently false, that can’t exactly be said of another movie on searchers’ minds this week: “Star Wars.” A photo revealing the cast of J.J. Abrams’ “Episode VII” showed original stars Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamill and more seated alongside new faces like John Boyega, Daisy Ridley and Adam Driver. The new cast members were on the top of the search charts quicker than the Millennium Falcon could make the Kessel Run. (Fun fact: searches for [bill weasley] were also on the rise; “Episode VII”’s Domhnall Gleeson played him in the “Harry Potter” movies.).

Wordplay
Actress Emma Stone made headlines this week when she faced off against Late Night’s Jimmy Fallon in an epic lip syncing battle; searches for [emma stone fallon] climbed 2,200 percent. But while we can’t deny Emma’s spoken-word skills, we’ve got a soft spot for two other playful phrases that made the zeitgeist this week. On Saturday, searchers learned that [zonkey] was not an adjective for how you feel after a red-eye, but actually a rare zebra/donkey cross born last week in Mexico. And [it’s gonna be May] was trending Wednesday after Organizing for Action’s Barack Obama Facebook page used the meme-y caption on a photo showing POTUS with Justin Timberlake. Just to bring this week full circle, the Know Your Meme entry on “It’s gonna be May” includes a reference to… “Mean Girls.”

Happy Friday, and we’ll see you next week.

Posted by Emily Wood, Google Blog Editor, who searched this week for [derby day history] and [andre movie]
The Official Google Blog

Earlier today we posted about efforts to provide information to those affected by the former hurricane and now superstorm Sandy.

We also want to let you know that Public Alerts are now available on Google Search & Maps in your browser, on Google Maps for Android and also on Google Now for Android devices running Jellybean.

Public Alerts provide warnings for natural disasters and emergency situations. They appear based on targeted Google searches, such as [Superstorm Sandy], or with location-based search queries like [New York]. In addition to the alert, you’ll also see relevant response information, such as evacuation routes, crisis maps or shelter locations.

We were planning on announcing the new features in a few days, but wanted to get them out as soon as possible so they can be helpful to people during this time.

This is part of our continuing mission to bring emergency information to people when and where it is relevant. Public Alerts are primarily available in English for the U.S., but we are working with data providers across the world to expand their reach.

If you are searching for superstorm Sandy, you’ll see content at the top of the Search page specific to this crisis. For other searches, you’ll see public alerts where and when they are live.

We’re able to gather relevant emergency safety information thanks to a strong network of partners, including NOAA and USGS. Their commitment to open standards like the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) is what makes this all possible. We’ve also developed partnerships to bring you even more relevant alerts in the future, including local emergency data from Nixle.

To learn more about Public Alerts, visit our Public Alerts homepage. If you’re a data provider, and would like to contribute to our efforts, please see our FAQ.

We hope that this information makes it easier for you to stay safe.

Posted by Nigel Snoad, product manager, Google Crisis Response

The Official Google Blog

Today we are launching AMBER Alerts coordinated by National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) in the Google Public Alerts platform. Public Alerts are designed to bring you emergency alerts when and where they’re relevant to you, and AMBER Alerts aim to help bring abducted children home safely.

If you’re using Google Search or Maps on desktop and mobile you’ll see an AMBER Alert if you search for related information in a particular location where a child has recently been abducted and an alert was issued. You’ll also see an alert if you conduct a targeted search for the situation. By increasing the availability of these alerts through our services, we hope that more people will assist in the search for children featured in AMBER Alerts and that the rates of safe recovery will rise.

AMBER Alerts will provide information about the abducted child and any other details about the case as they become available. Additional details could include the make and model of the vehicle he/she was abducted in or information about the alleged abductor.

The US Department of Justice’s AMBER Alert™ Program is a voluntary partnership between law enforcement agencies, broadcasters, transportation agencies and others to engage the entire community in the most serious child-abduction cases. We are working with NCMEC, who will provide the AMBER Alert data to Google and make it possible to display information in Public Alerts.

We’re working closely with Missing Children Europe and the Canadian Centre for Child Protection to try and scale this service to more countries. We’ll keep exploring different ways to improve child protection through innovative technologies, like what has been used to reduce exploitation and improve reporting to NCMEC.


Posted by Phil Coakley, software engineer, Google Public Alerts team

The Official Google Blog

When you have a question, finding the answer should be effortless—wherever you are and whatever device you’re using. The new Google Search app for iPhone and iPad helps you to do just that with enhanced voice search that answers any question with the comprehensive Google search results you know and love.

Fast and accurate voice recognition technology enables Google to understand exactly what you’re saying. Getting an answer is as simple as tapping on the microphone icon and asking a question like, “Is United Airlines flight 318 on time?” Your words appear as you speak, you get your answer immediately and—if it’s short and quick, like the status and departure time of your flight—Google tells you the answer aloud.

You can get answers to an increasingly wide variety of questions thanks to Knowledge Graph, which gives our search technology an understanding of people, places and things in the real world. Here are a few of the questions that Google can answer:

• “What does Yankee Stadium look like?” Google will show you hundreds of pictures instantly.
• “Play me a trailer of the upcoming James Bond movie.” The trailer starts playing immediately right within Google Search. 
• “When does daylight savings time end?” The answer will appear above the search results, so you can set your clock without having to click on a link. 
•  “Who’s in the cast of The Office?” See a complete cast list and find out who made you crack up last night. 

Download the Google Search App on your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch and find out how much wood a woodchuck would chuck (if a woodchuck could chuck wood).


Posted by Kenneth Bongort, Engineer, Google Search

The Official Google Blog

“Norwegian restaurants in New York City.” I can type that phrase fast, but I can say it even faster—and when I’m on the go, speed is what I’m looking for. With Voice Search, you can speak into your phone to get search results quickly and easily. Voice Search is already available in 29 languages, and today, we're bringing support to 13 new languages for Android users—bringing the total to 42 languages and accents in 46 countries. In fact, 100 million new speakers can use Voice Search now, with the addition of:

Each new language usually requires that we initially collect hundreds of thousands of utterances from volunteers and, although we’ve been working on speech recognition for several years, adding these new languages led our engineers and scientists to tackle some unique challenges. While languages like Romanian follow predictable pronunciation rules, others, like Swedish, required that we recruit native speakers to provide us with the pronunciations for thousands of words. Our scientists then built a machine learning system based on that data to predict how all other Swedish words would be pronounced.

This update has already started to roll out, and will continue to do so over the course of the next week. How you get started with Google Voice Search depends on what kind of phone you have. If your phone runs Android 2.2 or later, and you see the microphone icon on the Google Search widget on your homescreen, all you have to do is tap the icon to start a voice-powered search. Otherwise, you can install the Voice Search app from Google Play. Note that you can only speak one language into the app at a time, and you may need to change your language settings to use one of these new languages.

As with other languages we’ve added, one of the major benefits to Google’s cloud-based model is that the more people use Voice Search, the more accurate it becomes.

Posted by Bertrand Damiba, Product Manager

(Cross-posted on the Android blog)

The Official Google Blog

Larry Page once described the perfect search engine as understanding exactly what you mean and giving you back exactly what you want. It’s very much like the computer I dreamt about as a child growing up in India, glued to our black-and-white TV for every episode of Star Trek. I imagined a future where a starship computer would be able to answer any question I might ask, instantly. Today, we’re closer to that dream than I ever thought possible during my working life—and here are some of the latest steps we’re taking today to make search even more intelligent:

1. Understanding the world
In May we launched the Knowledge Graph, our database of more than 500 million real-world people, places and things with 3.5 billion attributes and connections among them. The feedback has been phenomenally positive and we want to extend this feature to people outside the U.S. So starting today, you’ll see Knowledge Graph results across every English-speaking country in the world. If you’re in Australia and search for [chiefs], you’ll get the rugby team—its players, results and history.

We’ll also use this intelligence to help you find the right result more quickly when your search may have different meanings. For example, if you search for [rio], you might be interested in the Brazilian city, the recent animated movie or the casino in Vegas. Thanks to the Knowledge Graph, we can now give you these different suggestions of real-world entities in the search box as you type:

Finally, the best answer to your question is not always a single entity, but a list or group of connected things. It’s quite challenging to pull these lists automatically from the web. But we’re now beginning to do just that. So when you search for [california lighthouses], [hurricanes in 2008] or [famous female astronomers], we’ll show you a list of these things across the top of the page. And by combining our Knowledge Graph with the collective wisdom of the web, we can even provide more subjective lists like [best action movies of the 2000s] or [things to do in paris]. If you click on an item, you can then explore the result more deeply on the web:

So far we can produce hundreds of thousands of lists involving millions of items, and we’ll keep growing to match your curiosity. A quick preview:

2. Putting your info at your fingertips
Sometimes the best answer to your question isn’t available on the public web—it may be contained somewhere else, such as in your email. We think you shouldn’t have to be your own mini-search engine to find the most useful information—it should just work. A search is a search, and we want our results to be truly universal. So we’re developing a way to find this information for you that’s useful and unobtrusive, and we’d love your feedback. Starting today, we’re opening up a limited trial where you can sign up to get information from your Gmail right from the search box.

So if you’re planning a biking trip to Tahoe, you might see relevant emails from friends about the best bike trails, or great places to eat on the right hand side of the results page. If it looks relevant you can then expand the box to read the emails:

We’re working on some even more useful features. For example, if you search for [my flights] we will organize flight confirmation emails for any upcoming trips in a beautifully easy-to-read way right on the search results page:

3. Understanding your intent
Often the most natural way to ask a question is by asking aloud. So we’ve combined our speech recognition expertise, understanding of language and the Knowledge Graph so that Voice Search can better interpret your questions and sometimes speak the answers back as full sentences. This has been available on Android for a few weeks and people love it. It’ll soon be available on your iPhone or iPad (iOS version 4.2+).

You just need to tap the microphone icon and ask your question, the same way you’d ask a friend. For example, ask “What movies are playing this weekend?” and you’ll see your words streamed back to you quickly as you speak. Then Google will show you a list of the latest movies in theaters near you, with schedules and even trailers. It works for everything from celebrity factoids to the height of Kilamanjaro and more. When Google can supply a direct answer to your question, you’ll get a spoken response too.

These are baby steps, but important ones on our way to building the search engine of the future—one that is much more intelligent and useful than it was just a few years ago. It’s a very exciting time to be working in this field.

Posted by Amit Singhal, SVP Google Search

The Official Google Blog

Unlike searching on a desktop or laptop computer, when you're searching on a touch-screen mobile device it’s often inconvenient to type. So we strive to give you a variety of ways to interact with Google, be it by speaking your queries, getting results before you finish typing, or searching by image. Now there’s a new way for you to interact with Google: Handwrite for web search on mobile phones and tablets.

Say you’re standing on a busy street corner, in a bumpy taxi ride, talking with a friend, or sitting on the couch with your tablet. Handwrite enables you to search by just writing letters with your finger most anywhere on your device’s screen—there’s no keyboard that covers half of the screen and no need for hunt-and-peck typing.

Getting started is easy: go to Google.com in your mobile browser, tap on “Settings” at the bottom of the screen and enable “Handwrite.” Note that after you've saved the setting, you may need to refresh the homepage to see the feature.

On tablets, the Search settings are available as an option behind the gear icon.

Once the feature is enabled, tap the Handwrite icon on the bottom right corner of your screen to activate the writing surface. Write a few letters and you’ll see autocomplete options appear below the search box. If one of the options is what you’re looking for, just tap it to search. For longer queries, you can continue writing and use the arrows next to the autocompletions to move the right one into the search box. Since you can write anywhere, you don’t have to look back and forth repeatedly from the keyboard to the search box.

For more tips and tricks on how to use Handwrite, see our Help Center article. To make accessing Google.com faster, be sure to bookmark it and add it to your home screen.

We designed Handwrite to complement rather than replace typing: with the feature enabled, you can still use the keyboard at any time by tapping on the search box. Handwrite is experimental, and works better in some browsers than others—on Android devices, it works best in Chrome. For now, we’ve enabled Handwrite for iOS5+ devices, Android 2.3+ phones and Android 4.0+ tablets—in 27 languages.

Have fun with this new way of searching!

Posted by Rui Ueyama, Software Engineer

(Cross-posted on the Inside Search Blog)

The Official Google Blog

We believe that openness is crucial for the future of the Internet. When something gets in the way of the free flow of information, we believe there should be transparency around what that block might be.

So two years ago we launched the Transparency Report, showing when and what information is accessible on Google services around the world. We started off by sharing data about the government requests we receive to remove content from our services or for information about our users. Then we began showing traffic patterns to our services, highlighting when they’ve been disrupted.

Today we’re expanding the Transparency Report with a new section on copyright. Specifically, we’re disclosing the number of requests we get from copyright owners (and the organizations that represent them) to remove Google Search results because they allegedly link to infringing content. We’re starting with search because we remove more results in response to copyright removal notices than for any other reason. So we’re providing information about who sends us copyright removal notices, how often, on behalf of which copyright owners and for which websites. As policymakers and Internet users around the world consider the pros and cons of different proposals to address the problem of online copyright infringement, we hope this data will contribute to the discussion.

For this launch we’re disclosing data dating from July 2011, and moving forward we plan on updating the numbers each day. As you can see from the report, the number of requests has been increasing rapidly. These days it’s not unusual for us to receive more than 250,000 requests each week, which is more than what copyright owners asked us to remove in all of 2009. In the past month alone, we received about 1.2 million requests made on behalf of more than 1,000 copyright owners to remove search results. These requests targeted some 24,000 different websites.

Fighting online piracy is very important, and we don’t want our search results to direct people to materials that violate copyright laws. So we’ve always responded to copyright removal requests that meet the standards set out in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). At the same time, we want to be transparent about the process so that users and researchers alike understand what kinds of materials have been removed from our search results and why. To promote that transparency, we have long shared copies of copyright removal requests with Chilling Effects, a nonprofit organization that collects these notices from Internet users and companies. We also include a notice in our search results when items have been removed in response to copyright removal requests.

We believe that the time-tested “notice-and-takedown” process for copyright strikes the right balance between the needs of copyright owners, the interests of users, and our efforts to provide a useful Google Search experience. Google continues to put substantial resources into improving and streamlining this process. We already mentioned that we’re processing more copyright removal requests for Search than ever before. And we’re also processing these requests faster than ever before; last week our average turnaround time was less than 11 hours.

At the same time, we try to catch erroneous or abusive removal requests. For example, we recently rejected two requests from an organization representing a major entertainment company, asking us to remove a search result that linked to a major newspaper’s review of a TV show. The requests mistakenly claimed copyright violations of the show, even though there was no infringing content. We’ve also seen baseless copyright removal requests being used for anticompetitive purposes, or to remove content unfavorable to a particular person or company from our search results. We try to catch these ourselves, but we also notify webmasters in our Webmaster Tools when pages on their website have been targeted by a copyright removal request, so that they can submit a counter-notice if they believe the removal request was inaccurate.

Transparency is a crucial element to making this system work well. We look forward to making more improvements to our Transparency Report—offering copyright owners, Internet users, policymakers and website owners the data they need to see and understand how removal requests from both governments and private parties affect our results in Search.

Posted by Fred von Lohmann, Senior Copyright Counsel

The Official Google Blog

Starting today, when you use the Google Search app on your iPhone, you’ll see a completely redesigned interface that gives you faster results, beautiful full-screen image search, and a simple way to access all your Google apps in one place.

Get results, fast
When you’re on the go, you usually want to get things done quickly. Autocompletion of search suggestions is significantly faster in this latest version of the app, bringing you search predictions instantly with each letter you type. You’ll also notice that pages load faster, and checking out multiple pages is easy with the slide-in panel. Quickly swipe back and forth between webpages and your search results, and swap between search modes like Images and Places with a swipeable menu. Finding text within a webpage is a snap as well; just try tapping the magnifying glass on the bottom menu option on any page.

Easily switch between search modes using the swipeable menu at the bottom	Swipe the slide-in panel to instantly return to your search results

Beautiful Image Search
Searching for images will never again be a chore. Tap the images button at the bottom of the search results page, and watch high-resolution images load into a beautiful grid. Browse the images by scrolling down the full-screen grid, or tap on a single image to get details about it and then quickly swipe from image to image. You can also tap and hold an image to save it to your camera roll to use as your wallpaper or share with a friend.

Simple access
We’ve put all of your favorite Google services in one place for easy access. You can choose to browse Google web apps, or see just the apps that you have on your phone. Sign in once, and you’ll never need to sign in again to check a quick email, view your next calendar appointment or see what’s hot on Google+.

Download the Google Search app now for a fast, beautiful, simple search experience on your iPhone.

Posted by Noah Levin, Interaction Designer, Google Search app

The Official Google Blog