Google Shakes Things Up By Adding Earthquake OneBox

By Barry Schwartz

Published: March 4, 2009 at 11:42 am

About two years ago, Greg Sterling wrote a piece on Searching for Earthquakes. Since then, I believe Ask.com was the only search engine providing a “smart answer” for earthquake data. Ask.com continues to offer the smart answer, but recently, Google added their own.

Google Operating System reports Google has added an Earthquake OneBox result for a search on earthquake. Here is a picture:

The data Google uses for this OneBox is from U.S. Geological Survey Earthquake Hazards Program.

Postscript: A day or so after, Google posted information about this new OneBox and titled their post Shaking up earthquake searches.

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Ask.com ChromeOS Earthquake Google Search engine United States Geological Survey

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About the author

Barry Schwartz

Barry Schwartz is a technologist and a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics.

In 2019, Barry was awarded the Outstanding Community Services Award from Search Engine Land, in 2018 he was awarded the US Search Awards the "US Search Personality Of The Year," you can learn more over here and in 2023 he was listed as a top 50 most influential PPCer by Marketing O'Clock.

Barry can be followed on X here and you can learn more about Barry Schwartz over here or on his personal site.