Image Timestamps, Better Instant Previews and Other New Features in Google Search

As usual, it's been another busy week at Google Search. Plenty of new features, changes and enhancements have been rolled out and Google has highlighted all of them in a weekly round up, including the ones that did not get their own separate announcement.

A Google a Day

A Google a Day was launched, a new trivia game that challenges not only your knowledge, but also your search skills, to discover the answer to increasingly difficult questions throughout the week.

Image search timestamps and Google Instant in more places

Recent images now have a timestamp, so it's easy to find the freshest results. Google Instant is being rolled out in more places around the world, it now works for signed in users in British Virgin Islands, Ghana, Greenland, Kenya, Lichtenstein, Luxembourg, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa and Uganda.

Instant Previews enhancements

Instant Previews, which display a thumbnail of web pages inside the search results, have been improved as well. A number of enhancements have been implemented since the feature launched, including playable videos.

Flash content is now supported as well, so videos, banners and entire pages built with Flash will get displayed in Instant Previews just like anything else.

Those that use Quick Scroll, which enables users to jump directly to the portion of a page that interests them, will find that it works with Instant Previews as well.

Instant Previews supports more formats too, .doc and .ppt files can now be rendered. It also works on more devices and browsers, including Opera on the desktop as well as smartphones and tablets.

Dictionary integration

The Dictionary tool is now integrated with the left side panel. If you're not sure what a word means, you can select Dictionary from the search filters and get a great overview.

There's a definition for the word, of course, but also synonyms, definitions from other places around the web and even usage examples to see it in action. You can also translate the world in any language supported by Google Translate.