Shift over, pandas. Fly away, hummingbirds. Waddle away, penguins. Google has a new animal friend: crows.
But compared with its previous organizations with the animal globe, this one is not about SEO or algorithms — it’s a new search technique that contributes range computation to Google’s OneBox function. (The OneBox is where Google often provides immediate solutions to searches rather than just introducing hyperlinks to the appropriate question.)
As Google described on 24th January 2014, the OneBox can now response how far it is between two distant places. It does the statistic “as the crow goes.” Google’s illustrations were Maharashtra and Rajasthan — an Indian state. It also performs when requested about two distant places, like Lonavala and Mumbai.
Google says the new OneBox performs with “far-flung places, beyond what you can drive or walk.” Indeed, if you ask how far it is between, say, Las vegas and Seattle, you do not get the “as the crow flies” solutions — you get a OneBox with the range calculated by driving mileage (and the guidelines from point A to point B).
Google provides this as a search feature function you can use with voice search on Google’s app (both iOS and Android). It also performs on Google desktop search, which is where I did the screenshot above.