Tag Archives: Cloud Search

Enable audit logs for Google Cloud Search

What’s changing 

You can now enable audit logging for Google Cloud Search APIs for improved tracking of usage data. With deeper tracking, it's now possible to build richer analytics on top of Cloud Search usage to make data driven decisions and improve your user’s search experience. 

When enabled, your Cloud Search APIs usage data are logged in a secure way and are easily accessible to you. Some data points that are logged are: 
  • Method and API details. 
  • Relevant content of the request and response received. 
  • IP address and identity (e.g. mail ID) of the caller. 
  • Response status, etc. 

Who’s impacted 

Admins and developers 

Why you’d use it 

Audit logs help you understand how Cloud Search is being used within your organization by answering questions such as which API was called by whom, when, and with what parameters. Additionally, you can also use these logs for troubleshooting or auditing purposes. 

Getting started 

Rollout pace 


Availability 

  • Available to Google Workspace Enterprise Plus and Google Cloud Search customers 
  • Not available to Google Workspace Essentials, Business Starter, Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Standard, Education Fundamentals, Education Plus, Frontline, and Nonprofits, as well as G Suite Basic and Business customers

Resources 


Enhance Cloud Search results for PDFs containing images with Optical Character Recognition support

What’s changing 

Cloud Search now supports Optical Character Recognition (OCR) based text extraction for PDFs that contain images, such as: 
  • Physical contract documents 
  • Engineering documents that contain annotations or labels 
  • Physical customer invoices, and more 

This makes PDFs with images containing text, such as scanned documents, easily searchable by users and improving discoverability of such PDFs. 


Who’s impacted 

Admins and end users 


Why it’s important 

Many critical business documents are either in physical form or as scanned versions of those physical documents. With OCR support, admins can now easily index these documents for Cloud Search, making it easier for users to quickly find relevant scanned documents. 

In addition, this feature eliminates the need to extract the text offline from PDFs containing images before indexing these documents on Cloud Search. 


Getting started 

  • Admins: The feature is ON by default. Use this guide to learn more about how to use enhanced search for PDFs containing images.  Important Note: PDFs must be submitted using the Asynchronous Indexing mode and must contain only images. 
  • End Users: No user action is required 

Rollout pace 


Availability 

  • Available to Google Workspace Enterprise Plus and Google Cloud Search customers 
  • Not available to Google Workspace Essentials, Business Starter, Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Standard, Education Fundamentals, Education Plus, Frontline, and Nonprofits, as well as G Suite Basic and Business customers

Resources 

Improve Google Cloud Search results with Contextual Boost

What’s changing 

We’re adding the ability to boost Google Cloud Search results using the Cloud Search Query API for third party data sources. Contextual boost is achieved by defining document specific context at the time of indexing and using the right contextual values at the time of query. Contextual boost is one of the key ways used to enable search personalization. 

Some examples of the contextual attributes you can define are: 
  • Location: Certain results can be more relevant to users from a specific location. For example, an employee in Japan might search for "benefits," and want to receive benefits information specific to their office in Japan 
  • Department: Certain results can be more relevant to a user's department. For example, a member of the Sales team might search for "pitch decks," and want to discover pitch decks specific to their team 
  • Tenure: Certain results can be more relevant to the user's tenure. For example, a new employee might search for "onboarding documents," and want to discover documents specific to employee onboarding 


Who’s impacted 

Admins and end users 


Why you’d use it 

Context is a critical element in providing highly relevant search results. By providing a wide range of contextual attributes, users will see more tailored results based on inputs such as location, department, and job role. This helps reduce the time spent searching by surfacing more relevant content faster. 

With this launch, we provide support for a wide range of contextual attributes that can be used to personalize the results for the end users. This launch also supports combining contextual attributes for deeper context. Combining attributes helps to further triangulate the right results tailored for a specific end user.


Getting started


Rollout pace


Use Virtual Private Cloud Service Controls to create security perimeters around Google Cloud Search data

What’s changing 

We’re introducing support for Virtual Private Cloud Service Controls (VPC-SC) for Google Cloud Search. You can use these controls to define a service perimeter around Google Cloud Search resources and create policies to grant access based on contextual attributes, such as: 
  • IP Address: You can grant an access level based on the IP address of the originating request 
  • Device type and operating system: You can grant an access level based on user devices, including operating system and version 
  • User Identity: You can grant an access level based on the user identity 
This ensures that:
  • Resources within a perimeter are accessed only from users with authorized VPC networks.
  • Clients with access to resources within a perimeter don't have access to resources outside that perimeter.
  • Data cannot be copied to unauthorized resources outside the perimeter.
  • Internet access to resources within a perimeter are restricted using allowlisted IPv4 and IPv6 ranges.
For more information, see this overview of the VPC Service Controls.


Who’s impacted

Admins and end users


Why you’d use it

Data security is paramount for every enterprise.. VPC Service Controls help you restrict public network access to your sensitive data while using Google Cloud Search’s fully managed document indexing and search capabilities. 

With this managed service, you can configure private communication between cloud resources and hybrid VPC networks. By expanding perimeter security from on-premise networks to data stored on Google Cloud Search, you can feel confident indexing and using sensitive data on Cloud Search. 


Getting started


Rollout pace


Availability

  • Available to Google Cloud Search customers and Google Workspace Enterprise Plus
  • Not available to Google Workspace Essentials, Business Starter, Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Standard, Education Fundamentals, Education Plus, Frontline, and Nonprofits, as well as G Suite Basic and Business customers


Resources


Embed Cloud Search in your new Google Sites

Quick launch summary

We’re adding a Cloud Search integration in new Google Sites. Site editors can now replace in-site search with Cloud Search, or add an always-open Cloud Search box to the header, body, or footer of the site itself.




Adding Cloud Search to your new Google Sites will give site viewers more powerful search, allowing them to find content across other Google Sites as well as other G Suite content. Search results are available to the site viewers directly from within the new Google Site itself.



Site editors can use our Help Center to learn more about using Cloud Search in new Google Sites.

Admins will be able to configure what data sources they want Cloud Search to search over using the “Google Sites Search Application”. The Google Sites Search Application will become available from within the Admin Console in late January. We’ll update this blog post once it begins rolling out.


 Availability

Rollout details

G Suite editions
  • Available to all G Suite editions who have Cloud Search enabled.


On/off by default?
  • This feature will be available by default for users with Cloud Search permissions enabled.


Stay up to date with G Suite launches

Material Design for Cloud Search

Quick launch summary

Cloud Search is getting a new look and feel. Users will notice some visual improvements, including:
  • Interface typography that uses Google’s custom-designed and highly-legible typefaces
  • Controls (like buttons, dialogs, and sidebars) that are updated and consistent
  • Iconography that is legible and crisp, with a fresh feel



Material Design for Cloud Search


Material Design for Cloud Search


Availability

Rollout details
G Suite editions
  • Available to all G Suite editions

On/off by default?
  • This feature will be ON by default.

Stay up to date with G Suite launches

View Cloud Search usage reports in the Admin console and the Stats API

What’s changing

Admins can now view Cloud Search usage information via charts in the Admin console and using the Stats API.

Who’s impacted

Admins only

Why it’s important

Previously, admins only had limited visibility into the usage of Cloud Search within their domains. Now, they have greater insight into things like how often applications are being used and whether all the content they need indexed is accessible.

How to get started



Additional details

Specifically, you’ll be able to view Cloud Search data around active users, query volume, and number of searches. Note: these stats will be available immediately through the Stats API. Rollout details for the Admin console can be found below in the Availability section.

Helpful links



Availability

Rollout details


G Suite editions

  • Available to G Suite Enterprise and G Suite Enterprise for Education, as well as standalone Cloud Search Platform customers
  • Not available to G Suite Basic, G Suite Business, G Suite for Education, and G Suite for Nonprofits


On/off by default?

  • This feature will be ON by default.


Stay up to date with G Suite launches

Expand the content your company searches with third-party indexing in Cloud Search

We introduced Cloud Search a year ago to allow teams to search quickly and easily across all of their company’s content in G Suite, from Gmail and Drive to Docs, Sheets, Slides, Calendar and more. We’re now announcing a significant expansion to the capabilities of Cloud Search that will help your organization get the speed, performance, and quality of Google Search across all of your content systems.

With new third-party indexing capabilities, Cloud Search can now intelligently and securely index your data beyond G Suite, whether it is stored in the cloud or on-premise. We’re excited to have 15 launch partners on board, including SADA, Onix and Accenture, and we’ll be adding more in the future.



We’re beginning to offer Cloud Search third-party indexing to a first wave of G Suite Enterprise customers who express interest. We’re also making this new functionality available as a standalone offering to non-G Suite customers. As part of this, we’re offering qualifying Google Search Appliance (GSA) customers an upgrade path to Cloud Search.

To learn more about this new functionality, express interest, or become a partner, sign up through this form and our sales team will be in touch with more information.

More Information
Help Center: Manage third-party data sources
Help Center: Google Search Appliance End of Life
The Keyword: Helping enterprises stay competitive with new updates in G Suite

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Search in the new Google Sites

Recently, we made it easier to surface content in the new Google Sites. Now we’re making it easier to find content on those sites. Going forward, users can simply click the magnifying glass in the top right corner of their screen and search across an entire site.


In addition, Google Cloud Search users will now see content from the new Google Sites in their Cloud Search results.


These improvements will allow Google Sites to better serve the needs of both site creators and viewers. Check out the Help Center for more details.

Launch Details
Release track:
Launching to both Rapid Release and Scheduled Release

Editions:
Search bar in the new Google Sites

  • Available to all G Suite editions

New Google sites appear in Google Cloud Search results

  • Available to G Suite Business and Enterprise editions only

Rollout pace:
Search bar in the new Google Sites

  • Full rollout (1–3 days for feature visibility)

New Google sites appear in Google Cloud Search results

  • Extended rollout (potentially longer than 15 days for feature visibility)

Impact:
All end users

Action:
Change management suggested/FYI

More Information
Help Center: Preview and publish your site on the web


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Search more intuitively using natural language processing in Google Cloud Search

(Cross-posted from The Keyword, with some additional details)

Earlier this year, we launched Google Cloud Search, a new G Suite tool that uses machine learning to help organizations find and access information quickly.

Just like in Google Search, which lets you search queries in a natural, intuitive way, we want to make it easy for you to find information in the workplace using everyday language. According to Gartner research, by 2018, 30 percent or more of enterprise search queries will start with a "what," "who," "how" or "when.”*

Today, we’re making it possible to use natural language processing (NLP) technology in Cloud Search so you can track down information—like documents, presentations or meeting details—fast.

Find information fast with Cloud Search

If you’re looking for a Google Doc, you’re more likely to remember who shared it with you than the exact name of a file. Now, you can use NLP technology, an intuitive way to search, to find information quickly in Cloud Search.

Type queries into Cloud Search using natural, everyday language. Ask questions like “Docs shared by Mary,” “Who’s Bob’s manager?” or “What docs need my attention?” and Cloud Search will show you answer cards with relevant information.



In addition to natural language processing, Cloud Search users will now see content from the new Google Sites in their Cloud Search results.

Having access to information quicker can help you make better and faster decisions in the workplace. If your organization runs on G Suite Business or Enterprise edition, start using Cloud Search now. If you’re new to Cloud Search, learn more on our website or check out this video to see it in action.






For more information on using Cloud Search, visit the Help Center.

*Gartner, ‘Insight Engines’ Will Power Enterprise Search That is Natural, Total and Proactive, 09 December 2015, refreshed 05 April 2017

Launch Details
Release track:
Launching to both Rapid Release and Scheduled Release

Editions:
Available to G Suite Business and Enterprise editions only

Rollout pace:
Full rollout (1–3 days for feature visibility)

Impact:
All end users

Action:
Change management suggested/FYI

More Information
Help Center: Use everyday words to search

Launch release calendar
Launch detail categories
Get these product update alerts by email
Subscribe to the RSS feed of these updates