Google Instant- Now in India

A few weeks ago we introduced a new way of searching that makes search more interactive and helps you find information more quickly and easily. We called it Google Instant, and today we are excited to be rolling out Instant in India.



Google Instant combines three core features -- dynamic results, Autocomplete predictions, and ‘scroll-to-search’ functionality -- to deliver smart, predictive results as you type. You can watch the video below that explains Google Instant in greater depth.







In the month since our initial release, we extended Instant to Google Books, Videos, Blogs and Updates, and launched keyboard shortcuts to help you navigate through search results. We have also learned more about how people are using Instant, and although it is still early days, we wanted to share some of those findings.



People are learning to use Instant. In just two weeks, we saw an increase in the fraction of searches performed without hitting enter or clicking search. People are used to searching on Google by hitting enter or clicking “search,” but we’ve been happy to see that people are quickly adjusting to the new experience.



Search is getting more interactive. We’ve seen about a 7% increase in on-the-fly editing of search queries. Instant isn’t just about time savings, it’s also a new, more fluid way to search. We’ve seen people reformulating their queries more. As you type, you see search results, and often those results can inspire you to type better search terms.



People are making the extra effort to use Instant. In just one week, we saw an increase in the relative number of search sessions starting on the Google homepage, likely because they want to use Instant. Google Instant currently only works on the Google homepage and results page, not in other places such as browser search boxes, the Google Toolbar, and the Chrome Omnibox. As people have learned about Google Instant, many seem to be searching more on the homepage in order to use the feature.



We are thrilled to be bringing Google Instant to India, and we look forward to hearing what you think.



Posted by Vinay Goel Product Management Director, Google India

India's 15th general election: tools for citizen empowerment

At Google, we believe information is fundamentally empowering. While all of our technologies demonstrate a commitment to this guiding principle, information is especially important when a society comes together to participate in democratic elections. Beginning ten days from today, more than 700 million eligible voters in India will over the course of four weeks have the opportunity to participate in the largest democratic event in human history — India's 15th general election.

Today, along with a wide range of partners, we are happy to announce the launch of the Google India Elections Centre - available in English and in Hindi.

People from across India can use the centre to do the following:

• Confirm their voter registration status
• Discover their polling location
• View their constituency on a map
• Consume relevant election-related news, blogs, videos, and quotations
• Evaluate the status of development in their constituency across a range of indicators
• Learn about the background of their Member of Parliament and this year's candidates
  

With still more features to be added during the election, we hope the site will be an ongoing resource for analysis, governance, and democracy in India after the election.

This project would not have been possible without the shared vision of a broad coalition of partners: the Association for Democratic Reforms, HT Media Limited, Indicus Analytics, the Janaagraha Centre for Citizenship and Democracy, the Liberty Institute, and PRS Legislative Services. These groups are the true champions of promoting a more transparent democracy, and we're privileged to be able to shine a light on their work on the occasion of India's 15th Lok Sabha polls.

We're hopeful not only that the elections centre will further a culture that seeks access to information, but that it will also yield positive changes in voting patterns during the upcoming polls.

Please visit the site, select your constituency, and get started! Spread the word about what you learn and, of course, don't forget to visit the polls.

Posted by Rishi Jaitly, Senior Policy Analyst, and Sanjay Jain, Product Manager

Email in Indian languages

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(cross-posted from the Official Google Blog)

It's hard for me to imagine going without email for a day. It's such an easy and convenient way to communicate with my friends and family. However, there was one limitation that bothered me: my family members and friends who prefer to communicate in Hindi did not have an easy way to type and send email in their language of choice. I am therefore extremely happy to announce the launch of a new feature in Gmail that makes it easy to type email in Indian languages.

When you compose a new mail in Gmail, you should now see an icon with an Indian character, as the screenshot below shows. This feature is enabled by default for Gmail users in India. If you do not see this function enabled by default, you will need to go the "Settings" page and enable this option in the "Language" section.

When you click the Indian languages icon, you can type words the way they sound in English and Gmail will automatically convert the word to its Indian local language equivalent. For example, if a Hindi speaker types "namaste" we will transliterate this to "नमस्ते." Similarly, "vanakkam" in Tamil will become "வணக்கம்." We currently support five Indian languages -- Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam -- and you can select the language of your choice from the drop-down list next to the icon.

We built this new feature using Google's transliteration technology, which is also available on Google India Labs, Orkut, Blogger and iGoogle. I hope you find this feature useful to communicate with those of your friends and family who prefer to write in their native language, and it will be available soon to businesses and schools using Google Apps. Now back to replying to all those Hindi emails I got from my family and friends today!

Posted by Chandramouli Mahadevan, Software Engineer

Webmaster Community on Orkut Launched!

You have just created a site and now you want the world to see it. To be more specific, to people looking for the same thing that you have to share. At that time do you know how you can add your site to Google’s search index? Or have you wondered how often Google crawls the web?

A study on Indian websites reveals that a 83% of Indian sites do not use XML Sitemaps and about 50% of them do not make use of the robots.txt file.
After looking at the results we realized that there are a lot of Indian webmasters searching for answers to questions regarding websites. So we decided to pitch in to help out. First, we sought a common platform to serve as a mode of communication in the Indian Sub-Continent. In order to do so, we have set up our very own Official Google Webmasters Community on the most popular Google product in India, Orkut.

Now you don’t have to search for solutions to every webmaster related problem. You can do it while you are sending a scrap to your friend.
So if you own a website, if you think you can make the web a better place or if you need help, join the Webmaster Community. Let us know how we can help you share, learn and reach out to everyone on the web.

Posted by Manasa, Search Quality Team

Google Phone Search Launched in Mumbai and Bangalore

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Last year we started a pilot of Google Phone Search where users from Hyderabad and Delhi could call a toll free number and search for local businesses or movie showtimes. We believe that speech recognition and voice access to information is a very important technology for India because it helps us reach users who may not have access to PC or are on the move all the time.

Starting today, users in Mumbai and Bangalore can also call the same toll free number 1-800-41-999-999 at no cost from any phone to search for local business and movie showtimes and get the results by SMS. For example, if you are looking for pizza delivery businesses you can call and say "pizza" and your area name (like Bandra in Mumbai or MG road in Bangalore) to get listings near you.

We are continuously working towards improving our speech recognition technology but it is still not perfect and it may not recognize you at times. We will transfer your call to an operator after 2 recognition failures who can assist you with your query.

So go ahead and try Google Phone Search for free and send us your feedback on how we can serve you better.

Tip: Add 1-800-41-999-999 to your phone book today!

Posted by Rutvik Doshi, Product Manager

Prizes for Panchayats

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Earlier today, Google.org announced the launch of the Google.org Gram Panchayat Puraskar (GGPP) to celebrate innovative panchayats and encourage more innovation in local governance throughout the country.Google.org will reward the top five panchayats in two states, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh, with a cash prize of Rs.5 lakhs (approximately $10,000 USD) which they can use to do more good in their communities.

To learn more about Google.org or the Google.org Gram Panchayat Puraskar, please visit the Official Google.org Blog and the contest website.



Posted by Salimah Samji and Meryl Stone

Search tools for Indian language websites

As a Google employee, I really like search, and I especially like being able to search for content on a web site using a search box, like the "Search our Blog" box on the right of this page. However, very few Indian language web sites have such a search box, probably because most users find it hard to input queries in Indian languages using their English keyboards.

If you are a web master who runs an Indian language web site, and would like to enable users to search through your web pages, Google can help you give your users the ability to search, without you having to write any code. All you would need to do is to configure and embed one of our iGoogle gadgets.

Lets say that you have a Tamil language web site and want to enable search within your site. You would go through the following steps:

1. Go to the gadget syndication page and search for the keyword Tamil
2. Choose either the transliteration search gadget or the on screen keyboard gadget
3. Click on the "Add to your webpage" button
4. Configure the size, title and border
5. Type the domain name of your web site in the site restrict box
6. Click on the "Get the code" button, and copy the Javascript code to your web site

Your site visitors will be able to use our transliteration technology to convert the equivalent English characters into Tamil words, or click on the letters of the Tamil alphabet to search on your site depending on which of the two gadgets you chose. If your web site is in another language you can choose the appropriate language gadgets. Currently our Transliteration API supports Hindi, Malayalam, Kannada, Tamil and Telugu, while we have on screen keyboards in about 18 languages.

If you want to help site visitors search through multiple web sites instead of just one, you can create a Custom Search Engine and specify the id of the Custom Search Engine instead of a domain name when you configure the gadget. As an example we have embedded a Tamil on screen keyboard gadget into this post, that searches through Indian Government Web sites. Try a query like "வேலை வாய்ப்பு" for example.

So, go ahead and help your visitors search through your Indian language web sites !

Posted by M. T. Raghunath, Software Engineer