Google Reveals Enhanced Mobile Search

Google continues to enhance the user’s search experience after it brought some desktop features to mobile devices.

The company revealed the changes in an 16 April post on its Inside Search blog.

Quicker Search

First is the addition of new quick links. Google offers the example of users wanting to quickly search Rotten Tomatoes for a movie review while deciding with friends which movie to see. Instead of clicking on Rotten Tomatoes and then looking for the information the user wants, Google delineates the Rotten Tomatoes offerings – showing users links for things like In Theatres, Top Movies and New DVD Releases with Rotten Tomatoes – in addition to a link to the site itself, saving users clicks and page loads.

As of 16 April, Google’s now also offering what it calls “quick view badges.”

“Say you’re new to poker or need a quick refresh on hands,” the blog explains. “Just search for ‘poker hands,’ and you can now click the blue badge and see a quick view of the Wikipedia page listing out the poker hands immediately.”

For now, Quick view, which Google calls an “experimental project,” is only enabled for Wikipedia, when searches are performed in English. But Google says it’s working to expand the badges to additional sites.

The Inside Search blog is attached to Google’s newly launched How Search Works Website.

The site offers, among other things, an interactive, graphical explanation of Google Search; overviews of major search algorithms and features; a 43-page document explaining how Google evaluates its test results; a live slide show showing the removal of spam; graphics explaining the spam problem and Google’s tools for removing it; and a list of Google policies explaining its rules for removing content.

Sector Dominance

Google continues to be the world’s first-choice search engine for finding answers.

ComScore released the results of March’s search-engine rankings 12 April, and Google commanded a 67 percent share of the “explicit core” search market, fielding 13.7 billion of the 20.4 billion searches conducted during the month. (Explicit core refers to exactly what was searched for, and so excludes contextually driven searches.)

Microsoft came in second place, with a 17 percent share. Behind it came Yahoo, with a 12 percent share; the Ask Network, with a 3 percent share; and AOL, with a 2 percent share, according to ComScore.

Apple, which hopes to remove rival Google’s software from its devices, has reportedly been in talks with Yahoo regarding how the pair might more intensely collaborate.

Apple’s Siri, which offers iPhone users an alternative to typing into Google’s search engine, culls data from Yahoo, which relies on Microsoft’s Bing search engine. Yahoo, however, signed a 10-year deal with Microsoft in 2009, and Apple currently has an agreement with Google.

Apple and Yahoo are nonetheless brainstorming on possible, complementary arrangements, “including possible deals to get more content from Yahoo News and its other Web properties loaded on Apple devices or available through an expanded Siri partnership,” The Wall Street Journal reported 9 April.

How well do you know Google’s secrets? Find out with our quiz!

Originally published on eWeek.