'Intelligent' Google searches bring up extra info

A new type of Google search that aims to understand exactly what users are looking for has become available in New Zealand.

The Knowledge Graph feature displays useful information alongside the usual search results for more than 500 million search terms - including landmarks, well-known people, cities, sports teams, buildings, geographical features, art and more.

It aims to help users find exactly what they are looking for and help them make unexpected discoveries.

Google says internet searches usually work by matching up keywords to queries, but the new feature is an intelligent model that aims to understand real-world entities and their relationships to one another.

A Google search for "Sky Tower" now brings up extra information to the right of the search results - including a map of the Auckland landmark's location, pictures, and information including its height, opening date, hours of business and a contact telephone number.

It also suggests other places of interest including the Auckland Harbour Bridge, museum and zoo.

The feature isn't perfect yet, though - it lists the Sky Tower's address simply as "Auckland, 1010".

Google says that it works best with searches of people, bands, landmarks and sports teams.

Knowledge Graph was introduced to the United States in May and was installed in all English language searches overnight.

Google also issued new statistics, including that it serves more than three billion searches a day. On a typical day, Google's search bots crawl more than 20 billion pages, to add to its list of 30 trillion web pages.