This week, at a launch event in Mountain View, California, Google announced some new and improved features for mobile search. As the number of people that use internet-enabled handheld mobile devices continually increases, Google have acknowledged that the traditional text based search is not always most convenient/appropriate and they are looking for ways to reinvigorate the how users can conduct mobile searches.
Voice Search
Originally introduced in an iPhone application last year, Google voice search allows users to search simply by speaking into their mobile phone. For internet users that are constantly on the move the ability to conduct a quick search without stopping and typing could be hugely beneficial. Over the last year Google have improved and expanded the voice search so that it is now available in English, Japanese and Mandarin and on a variety of different devices.
Locational Search
Google have also noted that one of the most common reasons that people perform searches from their mobile devices is to ask what there is to do in the local area. In order to provide searchers with a more streamlined way of discovering what is around them Google have added a “What’s Nearby” feature to Google Maps. This feature ties in with the “My Location” feature (which pinpoints, and zooms in on, a user’s location) to provide users with a list of things to do in their immediate vicinity.
Visual Search
The most intriguing of the new features to be announced by Google is “Google Goggles”; a new Google Labs application for android based mobile devices that lets users search by taking a photo with their phone. The idea is that the searcher can take a picture of a monument, piece of art or building and Google will attempt to identify the object in the picture and then conduct a search on it. As the feature is still in its testing phase the technology is still in its infancy, but the potential to search for information on an item or landmark without actually knowing what it is could provide a revolutionary change in the way mobile searches are conducted.
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