Google is working with US state governments to make online information more easily accessible to citizens.
The search site partnered with Arizona, Utah, California and Virginia so that “information that previously did not appear in a casual Google search will now appear when searching for results on relevant topics ranging from education to health to property records or regulations”, Reuters reported and Google announced.
Like the plethora of local government and other state websites here in the UK, there is little consistency and a great deal of independence among the rash of American state and local government websites.
Frequently, users find it difficult to find information because of distinct or poor information architectures.
The partnership is a recognition of the important role search engines play as remote navigational tools.
The initiative will reportedly involve the state sites deploying Google’s Custom Search Engine on their sites, creating sitemaps and working with the Mountain View, California company to better publicise information in google.com queries.