Nowadays, there"s a lot that can be done on Google Search, from shopping to creating movie watch lists, but there are still times when it"s hard to find what you"re looking for. Now, Google is trying to help a little bit by letting users know that a specific search query didn"t return good results, and offering tips on how that search can be improved to find what the user wants.
Google already accommodates for certain variations in language, such as misspellings and different phrasing, which usually helps the search engine find results even if the search terms aren"t ideal. However, if a specific search falls out of the scope of what Google can remediate, it might not return any results, or provide a number of irrelevant results.
With this change, when one of these searches is made, Google will display a warning on top of the search results, saying that none of them are "great". The same warning will link to similar searches that might get better results, or offer tips on how to make better searches, such as changing "how to make a cake" to "cake recipes".
Naturally, this isn"t something you should see very often, since you"d expect to get good results most of the time. Regardless, for users who aren"t familiar with effective search practices, this could be helpful. The feature is rolling out in the United States starting today, and it"s unclear when it will make its way to other markets.