Google’s “normal” listings show the title of a web page, a description of it (also called a “snippet”) and the web page’s URL. However, Google also has other listings that appear within search results that are designed to give access to some of its specialized search tools (such as news search), to allow more information to be shown than a standard answer provides or to show answers directly within the search page. Here’s a short overview to these alternatives.

OneBox Results

OneBox results are when Google shows information within a special unit, often with images associated with them. OneBox unit often appears to highlight news, shopping, image and other results that are blended into regular listings using Universal Search (see Google Universal Search for more about this)

In the example below, you can see three different OneBox units all mixed among regular results:

OneBox, by the way, gets its name from the idea that Google searchers should be able to use one single search box to access information from the various Google specialized search engines that exist.

Local OneBox Results — The “10-Pack”

For local results, Google does a special OneBox display that has a map on the left side of the OneBox and 10 local listings to the right. Here’s an example:

Those who track local search closely call this the “10-Pack” or “Ten Pack” display, because of the 10 local listings that are packed into such a small area.

Plus Box

Google “Plus Box” results are where Google shows a search listing with a little + symbol nearby that when selected “expands” the listing to show more information. For example, in the search on “dell” below, you can see a line that says “+ Show stock quote for DELL” like this:

Clicking on the + symbol displays a stock price chart and further information, like this:

Direct Answers

For some popular queries, Google tries to show an exact answer to what you’re looking for right at the top of the search pages. For example, here’s a search on weather in Newport Beach:

See how the weather report is shown directly in the results? That’s a direct answer, and Google does this for everything from sports scores to flight tracking. Here’s a list from Google of just some examples of direct answers you can try.

For more about the features shown above, see the Google: OneBox, Plus Box & Direct Answers section of the Search Engine Land Library. Also see the Google: Search Customization and Google: User Interface sections for other ways Google customizes its search results.

I wrote earlier that it was probably driving Google crazy to see people “amazed” that Bing is doing stuff that Google itself has long offered. Now Google’s fighting back. The first shot? A new Explore Google Search page.

Google’s had help pages like this before. For example, this one still remains, showing various special features such as the ability to get weather results. But this new page is being featured right from the Google home page:

The page frames many of Google’s features in an easier-to-read format:

And it comes with an introduction highlighting how serious Google is about search:

Search is at the heart of everything we do at Google. Our engineers work every day to solve the hardest search problems, and thus improve your online experience. Here’s a glimpse at what they do, the features they’ve built and the remarkable user stories that inspire our work.

As I said before:

Google’s never really had to market itself to consumers, to trot its stuff. The recently held “Searchology” event didn’t cover anywhere near the range of what Google offers. But if the praise for Bing keeps largely rolling in — if people keep discovering features that aren’t necessarily unique to Bing — Google may find it has to step up.

To me, this page is all about doing that stepping up. Of course, the page is well worth reviewing, for those who aren’t aware how Google can provide everything from sports scores to flight tracking. As can Bing, and as can Yahoo.

The Microsoft Translator Blog announced that translation is now an instant answer in Bing, Microsoft’s new search engine.

Here are some examples:

Google added limited translation as a OneBox over a year ago. But it seems like both Yahoo and Ask.com do not have smart answers for translation.

Hat tip to LiveSide for spotting this.

The major search engines are often quick to point out occasions when they’ve done a good job anticipating searchers’ needs and providing instant answers to search queries right in the search results; see this Live Search announcement about instant Oscar Award results as an example.

But when they miss an opportunity? That’s someone else’s job. And over the weekend, Rick Duncan did just that when he compared Google, Yahoo, Live Search, and Ask.com to see how they handled the search phrase, who won the kentucky derby.

The results?

Duncan says Live Search was the winner from his Sunday morning experiment, barely edging out Ask.com. I’d say they both win because they answered the query (and because I’m not interested in Mint Julep recipes). Have a look and decide for yourself:

Google and Yahoo provided no such quick answers, but Google at least had a result halfway down the page that showed the name of the winning horse.

All of the search engines provide quick answers at sports events like the Super Bowl and the Olympics. But it’s a mystery why Google and Yahoo overlooked thoroughbred horse racing’s equivalent of those major events this weekend.

I’ve written about how hard it is for people to break the Google Habit (and see here) and consider other search engines. But breaking the habit can be done, and Microsoft’s Live Search shows an easy win for this type of thing in response to a search for oscar winners. Check it out — the actual winners are shown right at the top of the page:

Microsoft talks more about this special feature in a blog post from Friday. And similar to Microsoft, Ask.com also provides direct answers:

Now compare those to what you get on the same search over at Google:

No actual answers, nor is the first site the official Oscars web site, as you’d think would be most relevant (Microsoft and Ask both puts the official site tops, Microsoft right after the actual winners, Ask in between the winners and a lot of ads). At Yahoo, there are no direct answers.

Providing instant answers like this isn’t something new for search engines. They’ve long been offered. They’ve had different names at different search engines, but the concept has been out there for years.

But old tricks can still be good ones. For me, these type of specific answer searches can be a habit breaker when you know to expect them consistently. If there’s an earthquake, Ask.com has a long-standing feature that gives you a list of the latest quakes at the top of the page (try it yourself for earthquakes). I always check it for quake news. I absolutely love Microsoft’s snow report feature and go straight to Microsoft if I need to check on a resort (try it for Brighton, Utah).

Of course, Google has a long list of direct answers it provides, from weather to the current time. It’s no slouch here. But there’s still plenty of opportunity for competitors to stake out territory for certain types of searches.

Google Hot Trends can be a fascinating look at what has suddenly peaked the interest of Americans, and today everyone wants to know about the Superbowl. 35 of the 100 spiking searches have the word [superbowl] in them, and another 27 are Superbowl-related (including game-food recipes and team details).

So how do searchers fare in finding out what they’re looking for?

Superbowl start time

Google

Searchers are most interested in knowing what time the game starts and what channel to watch it on. The number one search (and the most descriptive) is [what time does the super bowl start 2009]. I hope those searchers weren’t feeling lucky, because the first web result on Google is for an article about the upcoming 2007 Superbowl. A news result appears before that, and it seems to be matched based on grabbing the words “super bowl” and “2009″ at random (and potentially considering “Star” a synonym to “start”). The second web result does in fact have the answer, albeit a bit incomplete.

Yahoo

Yahoo doesn’t fare much better. It lists a page with the 2008 start time as the first result (and that page links to a page about the 2009 start time).

The issue doesn’t seem to be a problem with the freshness of the index, because the Google Trends page that shows this is a hot query is right there at number 10!

Microsoft Live

Searchers on Live might miss the game entirely.

Like Google, Live has news results at the top that aren’t in any way related to the Superbowl start time. The first result that appears it might answer the start question is located all the way at position five. And it looks like it could be the only result on the entire page that would answer the question. Live is also the only engine of the three to show ads above the results, and the relevance of “1 Rule to Lose Your Gut” to the query is questionable.

Where are the official Superbowl sites?

The NBC and NFL sites were nowhere to be found in the top ten of any of the search engines. That’s not entirely the fault of the search engines, as both sites are hiding all of their potential content in Flash (and in the case of the NFL are adding the further obstacle of a 302 redirect from superbowl.com). Since search engines want to provide the best possible results and Adobe wants web developers to keep using Flash, this poor searcher experience just supports the notion that both should continue to improve Flash’s crawlability.

But it also reinforces the advice that site owners have to be aware of the limitations of technologies such as Flash. The fact is that if you want your site’s content to be found by searchers, you have to make sure you’re building it in a search-friendly way. You can’t rely on the search engines to sort things out.

What about [superbowl]?

Do the search engines do better at finding the official sites for a more generic search? We can see by the Google Trends data that searchers aren’t looking for just [superbowl] alone, but let’s give the engines an easy query for comparison.

Google

Google does pretty well, returning the official NFL page as the top result (despite the redirect and the Flash). However, since Google can’t read any text in the Flash and the page doesn’t have a meta description, Google has to resort to the dmoz.org description of the page for the snippet, which doesn’t mention the Superbowl at all, and that makes the result seem less relevant to searchers. It also has a pretty irrelevant ad above the results and that third result (”Arizona Super Bowl”) is another example of Flash and other multimedia causing searchability problems. The snippet is literally the only text Google could find on the page.

Google has substantially better results for the query [superbowl 2009].

Yahoo

Yahoo’s results are far better. The ad is pretty relevant, the Yahoo! Shortcut that shows up at the top of the results provides the game’s date and time (this would have been an ideal result for the previous query), and the first web result is for superbowl.com with a great snippet. (The rest of the top 10 are much more relevant than Google’s as well.) Unlike Google, Yahoo isn’t following the 302 redirect from superbowl.com to nfl.com/superbowl, and on quick glance, I’m not sure where they’re getting the snippet. (Updated to add: they’re pulling it from the Yahoo! Directory.) The Wikipedia result, enhanced with SearchMonkey, also helps the relevance of the results.

Microsoft Live

Live search has the right results, but to be honest, they’re kind of a mess. The ad above the results is completely irrelevant, the first result is an Instant Answer from Encarta that takes up too much room and provides details that are too vague. The first web result is the NFL site, followed by another Instant Answer from Stats Inc. that actually provides a pretty helpful result (the date, time, and teams). This is followed by a set of news results. All in all, there’s a lot going on here, and it’s difficult to sort out what’s a web result and what’s something else.

Live search has an odder Instant Answer for the second hottest query (according to Google Trends, pulling in details from “Holiday Origins”.

Will searchers find the Superbowl?

Searchers will undoubtedly try a few query variations and scan the result page enough to find what they’re looking for. But it’s clear both that events and questions drive people to search, and that search engines and sites still have a lots of room to improve in order to connect with those searchers.

Happy Superbowl viewing!

(By the way, in case you’re having trouble finding the details in your favorite search engine, the pre-game starts around 4pm Eastern on NBC and the kick-off is around 6:20pm Eastern.)

Looking for cheap gas? Sure, the price has been falling, but drivers are still looking to save. Enter Yahoo, which has rolled out a new shortcut that maps gas stations and gas prices directly within in the search results page.

Just use the words “gas prices” or “cheap gas” followed by a ZIP code or city name, and you’ll get back a map with prices mapped. I found that using only the word “gas” with a ZIP or city name also worked. The screenshot above shows how it looked for a search on gas prices 92663.How are things at other search engines? When I looked last June, Google was listing local stations in a map but without prices. That’s still the case:

It still feels like Google is missing an opportunity here. The situation is similar with Microsoft Live Search and seems more a wasted opportunity, since MSN Autos has a gas price mapping service.

Ask has a special shortcut that links to gas price services GasBuddy and MotorTrends:

That’s better than what Google and Live Search do but still far behind Yahoo’s new feature.

Yahoo’s prices come from GasBuddy.com. My past article, Looking For Stations With Cheap Gas Prices? Search Tools To The Rescue!, goes into detail about that service and several others like it.

Annoyingly, if you click on the map at Yahoo, you can’t zoom in on what’s shown. It’s not interactive at all. And if you click on the “Gas Price” link at the top or the “more gas prices” link at the bottom of prices listed, you’ll get shunted over to one of GasBuddy’s many regional sites. In my 92663 example, that sends me to orangecountygasprices.com, where my ZIP code entry isn’t passed along. Hopefully, Yahoo will fix this, so you don’t start from scratch if you try to look for more.

I’d also like to see Yahoo, Google and Live Search send a big signal to GasBuddy that it’s just not on for them to be operating so many different “independent” sites, each clearly designed to target a regional search for gas prices. If these were all within the same gasbuddy.com domain, they wouldn’t “crowd” out other listings. But as they are all on separate domains, they push other sites aside.

For example, in a search on Google for gas prices, I get a Gas Buddy site in these positions:

• 1) gasbuddy.com
• 2) gasbuddy.com
• 3) losangelesgasprices.com
• 10) twincitiesgasprices.com
• 12) atlantagasprices.com
• 14) newyorkgasprices.com

Surely one site that Gas Buddy owns and operate per results page should be enough, shouldn’t it?

The Midwest of the US was rocked by an unusual 5.2 earthquake. Looking at Google Trends, which shows popular recent queries, I can see people immediately hit the search engines with queries like illinois earthquake, chicago earthquake, and midwest earthquake. So how did the search engines do? Especially when search engines are supposed to be providing better direct answers for queries like this? Not particularly well. Google alone came through with news results on a general search. All four did better with specific searches.

First, I checked what you’d get just for a search on [earthquake] at the four major search engines:

Google on earthquake:

Not bad — news search results right at the top.

Yahoo on earthquake:

Zilch. Bad on you, Yahoo.

Microsoft on earthquake:

Nice explanation, but no news results despite Microsoft’s upgrade of news searching this week. But if you hit the Recent Earthquakes suggestion on the right hand side, then you got this nice display:

Sadly, that gives results focused only on California and Nevada. And they’re not really results all indented under the top listing, but rather links to more info deeper within that particular site.

How about Ask.com? For earthquake:

Overall, I’d say Google took it for being most helpful. But how about for a more specific query like [midwest earthquake]? Here, Ask gives what I know it is capable of, a nice display of recent earthquakes at the top of the page:

But pity it doesn’t do this for a general search. Earlier this week, I heard on Twitter from GrammarGirl that there might have been an earthquake near Reno. There was. But if I hadn’t known the location, I wouldn’t have gotten much help from Ask.

Getting specific also gave me news results at the top of the page from Yahoo and Microsoft, while Google continued to perform as well as before. The Yahoo and Microsoft changes:

Overall, I wish I’d seen more "direct answer" style boxes like Ask provided on a general search from all the major search engines. At the very least, I should get news results — and in this, only Google did the right thing for a general query. FYI, see also Visualize Earthquake Data In Google Earth for looking at earthquake information within Google Earth.

Live Search has just added Instant Answers for snow conditions at ski resorts. Type a query for a resort name (such as “whistler”) or for a resort area (such as “CO snow report”) and you’ll see information such as lift status, amount of new snow, base depth, and conditions.

The blog post acknowledges that content boxes like this above the web results can be a balancing act. (Google recently expanded its local Onebox to 10 listings, to mixed reviews.) They’ll show a maximum of four resorts. For example, the query “washington snowboarding” brings up the top four open resorts by recent snowfall.

This information isn’t triggered by searches where intent is ambiguous (for instance, “blackjack,” which can be either a ski area or a mobile phone). One commenter to the blog post wondered whether this behavior was due to a manual keyword list or because of algorithmic factors. Alex Gutarin, Program Manager at Microsoft, replied:

“We use a bit of both. We first algorithmically identify suspect terms (e.g., based on the analysis of volume of queries and some other metrics) and then subject them to an editorial review.”

One interesting thing I noticed is that this morning, a search for Snoqualmie brought up conditions for the ski area. But currently, “Snoqualmie” brings up an Instant Answer with news about the the fact that the pass to Snoqualmie is currently closed.

This could be an intelligent display (it’s more useful to show that I can’t get to Snoqualmie right now than it is to show me what the conditions would be like were I able to get there). However, “snoqualmie ski” is still showing conditions, so if this is algorithmic intelligence at work, it’s highly targeted to focused keywords. More likely, Live Search shows only one Instant Answer at a time, the News Instant Answer is triggered on “snoqualmie” and not “snoqualmie ski,” and in the Instant Answer hierarchy, news trumps snow conditions. In either case, it’s interesting logic that, in my case, was extremely useful and gave me exactly the information I needed with no clicks from the search results.

I’ve been looking for functionality like this since the beginning of the winter season. The closest I had been able to find before this is the Snow Report Facebook application, which requires me to log in to Facebook and doesn’t provide as much information.

Do the other engines give me helpful information for all of my snowboarding needs? Ask is the only other engine who realizes the importance of snowboarding, giving me similar information in a Smart Answer:

However, they falter a little compared to Live Search on the “snoqualmie” search, showing me neither conditions nor news of the road closure, and instead filling a large portion of the page with a map of the town of Snoqualmie. (For someone interested in visiting the town, however, this might be a more relevant result.)

Google has no corresponding Onebox. The official ski area websites tend to have sitelinks and an expandable map to quickly get you to the information you need (although that requires a click), and a current search for “snoqualmie” has a news result about the pass closing as the fourth result. Yahoo! apparently isn’t a big skier or snowboarder.

The Google Blog announced they have improved how they return flight status information in search results. Instead of just providing a link to get flight times, you get that information directly in the OneBox area at Google, without requiring a click to see it.

Here is a screen capture of the Google results for a search on aa 123 before Google added schedule information to the result:

Here are Google’s new results:

Notice how Google now tells you if your flight is on time or delayed, as well as the estimated departure and arrival times.

Danny did a huge compare and contrast of how search engines handle flight status just a couple weeks ago in his Flight Tracking, Airport Conditions, Real-Time Traffic, & Other Thanksgiving Search Tips post.