A quick way to learn more about your search results

When you search for information on Google, you probably often come across results from sources that you’re familiar with: major retailer websites, national news sites and more.

But there’s also a ton of great information on and services available from sites that you may not have come across before. And while you can always use Google to do some additional research about those sites, we’re working on a new way for you to find helpful info without having to do another search.

Starting today, next to most results on Google, you’ll begin to see a menu icon that you can tap to learn more about the result or feature and where the information is coming from. With this additional context, you can make a more informed decision about the sites you may want to visit and what results will be most useful for you.

When available, you’ll see a description of the website from Wikipedia, which provides free, reliable information about tens of millions of sites on the web. Based on Wikipedia’s open editing model, which relies on thousands of global volunteers to add content, these descriptions will provide the most up-to-date verified and sourced information available on Wikipedia about the site. If it’s a site you haven’t heard of before, that additional information can give you context or peace of mind, especially if you’re looking for something important, like health or financial information.

If a website doesn’t have a Wikipedia description, we’ll show you additional context that may be available, such as when Google first indexed the site.

For the features Google provides to organize different types of information, like job listings or local business listings, you’ll see a description about how Google sources that information from sites on the web, or from businesses themselves, and presents it in a helpful format.

You’ll also be able to quickly see if your connection to the site is secure based on its use of the HTTPS protocol, which encrypts all data between the website and the browser you’re using, to help you stay safe as you browse the web. 

And if you need quick access to your privacy settings, or just want to learn a bit more about how Google Search works, links to resources are just a tap or click away.

We’ll begin rolling out this feature today in English in the U.S. on desktop, mobile web and the Google App on Android. We hope this makes it easier to learn about the results you see on Google and find the most helpful information for you.