Mountain View, California — Of late, web titan Google has been busy formulating improvements to its search engine and over the weekend updated its mobile search system to make quick answers-style search results for certain queries ‘richer, more beautiful, and more interactive,’ across a variety of subject areas such as flight schedules, conversions and a scientific calculator.
The new layout is formulated on existing context services — such as Googling for ‘600 GBP in USD’ to obtain a currency conversion — with a clearer UI, as well as allowing more straightforward tweaks to the results. The primary objective is to help you more quickly and easily find the answer you are looking for, without having to click on any other links. The changes are rolling out to those searching on google.com in English on a smartphone or tablet, Google announced on Thursday.
The company explained the concept in a blog post stating, “Now when you search on mobile or tablet, you will see some additional improvements in the way we provide these quick answers, including better understanding what information you need and surfacing the most relevant information for you,” says Google User Experience Designer Jeromy Henry. “For instance, in our flight status quick answer, we have included a flight progress indicator and increased the size of arrival and departure times so you can quickly see when your loved ones will be landing.”
Henceforth, when you search for the weather on your device, for instance, and at the top of the search results you will now see a visually appealing 10-day and hourly weather forecast with which you can interact. Also, search for a particular flight number like “Delta Air Lines Flight 1262” and you will see a new flight progress indicator with arrival and departure times, allowing you to quickly find out the status of a flight.
Interestingly, the search giant has embellished this update with some nifty feature it explained, “Some quick answer features we are updating on mobile and tablet cover finance, currency conversion, unit conversion, dictionary definitions, local time lookup, and holiday and sunrise times,” adds Henry. “In all these quick answers we have simplified the experience so you can concentrate on the answer you were looking for. For instance, for unit conversions the answer is displayed prominently for a question like [how many miles are 42 kilometers]. If you would like to convert another unit of measure like [how many yards in a mile], you can simply tap the card and see the full unit converter right there.”
More so, instead of requiring a new search whenever you are converting currencies, measurements or other numbers, the results box now includes drop-down menus for common choices. Besides, straight sums are now being presented in a functional calculator, while flight progress is displayed not only with scheduled and estimated times of arrival and departure, but a distance bar for an at-a-glance interpretation of whereabouts the plane is.
These enhancements are the latest in a number of new search modifications Google has made in recent weeks. Google claims the changes are rolling out to Google.com in English on mobile and tablets.