Google issues search updates for Drive, finding in-depth articles

While Facebook stole most of the spotlight today when it comes to content discovery, Google also has a few tiny but significant search updates to share.

To start, Google is mixing up the way it displays "in-depth articles" in search results.

Pandu Nayak, a member of the technical staff behind the Google Index, remarked on the official Google Webmaster Central blog on Tuesday that "users often turn to Google to answer a quick question, but research suggests that up to [10 percent] of users’ daily information needs involve learning about a broad topic."

Noting that results are ranked based on an algorithm tuned to certain signals, Nayak outlined some tips for webmasters so that the search engine can better identify their content.

Suggestions included providing authorship markups, providing information about a company's logo, and using certain codes for paginated articles.

Nayak also quipped something about creating "more compelling in-depth content."

The in-depth articles feature is rolling out now on google.com in English.

The second search update of the day concerns Google Drive.

Basically, users have many more options on what they can hyperlink to when editing documents and presentations (or "Docs and Slides") saved in the cloud-based storage services.

To offer an idea of how this works, the Google Drive team suggested that "when writing a paper on Athens, you can highlight 'Acropolis' and link it to a Google search result, a specific website, a heading or bookmark in your document, or even another file in Drive."

Simple stuff, but it has the potential to make both work-related and personal content much more interactive and easy to navigate.

The link tool is rolling out today. Users just have to highlight text and click the “Insert link” icon from the menu bar (or use Ctrl K)