What does Google’s SOS alert for Hurricane Irma mean?

If you’re one of the millions of people Googling “Hurricane Irma” in advance of the storm’s expected Florida landfall this weekend, the first thing you likely saw on the results page was a box declaring an “SOS Alert” for the Caribbean islands.

This box is not an official SOS signal, the Morse Code call that was the international standard for ships in distress, and isn’t a government directive. Instead, Google has adopted the phrase as the name of a series of services it offers during natural disasters.

Essentially, Google’s SOS alert is similar to Facebook’s Safety Check feature, which allows users to mark themselves safe if they are in the region of a disaster, accident or attack, according to The Verge. However, given Google’s platform, SOS alerts include more than just the ability to mark one’s self safe.

According to CNN, when SOS alerts are activated, several things happen across all of Google’s products. When users search for the term in question, Google’s search engine provides official updates, contact information for emergency services, a map of the affected area, relevant news stories and a place for people to donate money. For those actually in the area of the SOS alert, Google provides notifications on users’ phones that direct them to the same information, per Tech Crunch.

SOS alerts are a new feature, announced in July. One was used during Hurricane Harvey, but some users are still adjusting to the feature and concerned about what it means.

However, the alerts are likely to become much more common and understood over time, and some believe they will be a valuable resource.

This story was originally published September 8, 2017 at 11:00 AM with the headline "What does Google’s SOS alert for Hurricane Irma mean?."