Google Data

Through the Google lens: Search trends March 6 – 12

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This week, runways, verdicts and diapers were the the talk of the town on search. Read on to learn more.

Preachin’ papas
“Dude, where’s my baby changing table?” That’s what actor Ashton Kutcher was wondering on social media after he observed a lack of diaper-changing facilities in men’s restrooms. Kutcher offered to give a shout-out on his Facebook page to the the first business he could find with diaper-friendly bathrooms. While the actor’s call to arms might not move the needle in terms of shifting societal perceptions on parenting, it did get the celebrity trending on the search charts.

Runways and sun tans
Peering into our search crystal ball, we think we see a little more breakdance fighting in our future. This past Tuesday, actors Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson surprised fans and fashionistas everywhere when they unexpectedly took to the catwalk during Valentino’s display for Paris Fashion Week—all just to announce the sequel to their cult classic Zoolander. The news cracked the top 10 on trends for that day as searchers looked for videos of Stiller and Wilson strutting their stuff in full Zoolander and Hansel persona. One thing is clear: Blue steel is back in season.

You know who else is excited right now? College kids, thanks to a little annual tradition called spring break. Students are all packed up and ready to hit the sun-drenched beaches of Panama City and South Padre Island, and searches for last-minute destinations and travel suggestions are heating up.

Boiling over
Ferguson, Mo., is in the headlines again, and the reasons aren’t getting any better. First, the city’s police chief resigned following an investigation into his department that found evidence of racism. Then, two police officers were shot and injured during a demonstration at the Ferguson Police Department. Both officers are out of the hospital, but no arrests have been made, and protests are erupting in a city still traumatized by recent events—stirring people to get on the web to find the latest updates and causing sustained interest in the small city.

Imitation is the sincerest form of payment
Musicians Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams were found guilty of plagiarism after a jury determined that the duo infringed on soul singer Marvin Gaye’s track “Got to Give it Up” in 2013’s summer jam “Blurred Lines.” The artists were hit with a whopping $7.4 million fine and generated 200,000+ searches. Some are already deriding the decision as a vote against creative expression and a terrible precedent to set for the music industry. But the fight is far from over as both Thicke and Williams plan to appeal the verdict.

Tip of the week
This spring break, skip the overpriced frozen pina coladas and jello shots and make your own cocktails with help from Google. Just say, “Okay Google, how do I make a Snakebite?” and you’ll be making tips in no time.

Posted by Jenise Araujo, Communications Associate, who searched for [there’s a lot more to life than being good looking] and [spring breakers]

A new reference app for multi-device applications

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It is now possible to bring the benefits of your app to your users wherever they happen to be, no matter what device they have near them. Today we’re releasing a reference sample that shows how to implement such a service with an app that works across multiple Android form-factors. This sample, the Universal Music Player, is a bare-bones but functional reference app that supports multiple devices and form factors in a single codebase. It is compatible with Android Auto, Android Wear, and Google Cast devices. Give it a try and easily adapt your own app for wherever your users are, be that a phone, watch, TV, car, or more!

This sample uses a number of new features in Android 5.0 Lollipop, like MediaStyle notifications, MediaSession and MediaBrowserService. They make it easy to implement media browsing and playback on multiple devices with a single version of your app.

Check out the source code and let your users enjoy your app from wherever they like.

Posted by Renato Mangini, Senior Developer Platform Engineer, Google Developer Platform Team

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Protecting people across the web with Google Safe Browsing

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Online security is on everybody’s minds these days, so we want to give you updates about various ways Google keeps you safe online. Today, on the web’s birthday, we’re highlighting recent improvements to Safe Browsing, technology that protects more than 1.1 billion people all over the world. -Ed.

As the web continues to evolve, it’s important that user protections develop in lockstep so that people stay safe online. Our Safe Browsing technology may not be quite as old as the web—which celebrates its 26th birthday today—but ever since Safe Browsing launched nearly eight years ago, it’s continually adapted to protect web users, everywhere.

Safe Browsing gives users—both on Google and across on the web—information they need to steer clear of danger. The dangerous sites detected by Safe Browsing generally fall into two categories: sites that attack users intentionally with either malware, phishing, or unwanted software that is deceptive or hard to uninstall, or sites that attack users unintentionally because they have been compromised, often without the site’s owner realizing this has happened.

Once we detect these sites, Safe Browsing warns people about them in a variety of ways. You’ve probably come across a warning like this in Chrome, Firefox or Safari; it’s powered by Safe Browsing:

Today, Safe Browsing shows people more than 5 million warnings per day for all sorts of malicious sites and unwanted software, and discovers more than 50,000 malware sites and more than 90,000 phishing sites every month. If you’re interested, you can see information about the dangerous sites that are detected by this technology anytime in our Safe Browsing Transparency Report.

We also use Safe Browsing technology to warn website owners or operators about issues with their sites so they can quickly fix them. We provide basic site maintenance tips, as well as specific Safe Browsing notifications in Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics. Often site owners don’t realize there are issues with their sites until they get these notifications.

Recent developments
Since its earliest days, Safe Browsing has been widely available, and free—for users, site owners, and other companies—to use and integrate into their own products. In the early days, we focused on detecting dangerous sites and then showing people warnings:

But, just as attacks become more sophisticated, we’ve made sure our own technologies have kept up. Over the years, we’ve built Safe Browsing into other Google products to help protect people in more places:

• Safe Browsing API: We already make Safe Browsing data available for free to developers. This week we’re adding information about sites that host unwanted software, allowing developers to better protect their users as well.
• Chrome: Before people visit a site delivering unwanted software, or try to download some of it, we show them a clear warning.
• Google Analytics: We recently integrated Safe Browsing notifications into Google Analytics, so site owners can quickly take action to protect their users if there are issues with their websites. Previously, we’d only provided these warnings via our Webmaster Tools service.
• Ads: We’ve also recently begun to identify ads that target people with unwanted software.

As the web grows up, Safe Browsing technology will, too. We’re looking forward to protecting the web, and its users, for many birthdays to come.

Posted by Panayiotis Mavrommatis, Safe Browsing Team