This week in search 4/29/11

This is part of a regular series of posts on search experience updates that runs on Fridays. Look for the label "This week in search" and subscribe to the series. - Ed.

This week, you can find what you’re searching for a little faster, whether it’s a recipe, the time of the royal wedding or a local prayer time.

More relevant predictions in Recipe View
In the past, when you searched in Recipe View on Google, you’d see the same search predictions that you’d see on the main web results page, which wasn’t always helpful for specifically food-related searches. Now when you search in Recipe View, you’ll see more relevant search predictions. For example, typing [c] will give you predictions for [chicken] or [cake] versus [craigslist] or [cnn], and typing [co] will predict [cookies] or [coconut]—and maybe inspire you to make coconut cookies. This feature is currently available in English, with more languages and local delicacies to follow.

Rich snippets for prayer times
Rich snippets are the brief descriptions you see beneath search results that summarize what's on a webpage and provide you with more information before you click on a site link. For example, if you search for [events], you’ll see a list of upcoming local events on the results page.

Now, in addition to rich snippets for events, reviews and people, you can find local prayer times quicker and easier in your results. For example, a search for Islamic prayer times in London will show prayer times and locations. As more sites around the world use rich snippets for prayer times, you’ll start seeing results for additional cities.

The technology is open for use by religious organizations from any faith, and is particularly useful for Islamic prayer times, which are measured according to the movement of the sun. If you have a site with prayer times, you can update your site using the rich snippets format specified in Google Webmaster Central.

Google Instant in Japan
Searchers in Japan will now be able to see search predictions and results appear as they type. Google Instant will be available for everyone in Japan over the next few days, as well as for those typing in Japanese on other domains that currently support Google Instant.

Time for the royal wedding
The highly anticipated royal wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton had many people setting their alarm clocks to watch the live broadcast from Britain—which meant figuring out exactly what time the ceremony would be in your local time zone. To make it easier to tune in at the right hour, searches related to the royal wedding displayed a box at the top of the results page with the time of the wedding in your local time zone; this info was available in 23 languages. Congratulations to the happy couple!

As we head into the weekend, don’t forget to try solving today’s A Google a Day question at www.agoogleaday.com:

Posted by Ben Gomes, Google Fellow