The search giant has taken the wraps of its latest mobile search innovation…
“Internet giant Google is re-launching its mobile search engine in the company’s latest attempt to break into the lucrative mobile phone market…”
Google on Wednesday launched its revamped mobile-search service in the UK, streamlining the interface and introducing an experience it believes will be more relevant to mobile-phone users.
The American dotcom hopes that its new system will get more people using their phone to search for local data, maps and news. In an attempt to draw more customers, the interface has been made cleaner and faster, and the results are being tailored for mobile as opposed to computer users.
“It is the same search index but it is a little more aggressive on location,” said Dave Burke, engineering manager with Google mobile in London.
“Let us say for instance you put “Arsenal” in there –- chances are you are not going to look up the history of the club but you are looking for the latest scores. So we have lots of sports information that we fire at you."
“Besides delivering more relevant results, the new service also offers enhanced local search functionality, whereby it can remember recent search locations and ensure that relevant local results are factored into subsequent searches.”
This should provide benefits to business users who find themselves in different towns, cities or even countries frequently as, once a user has entered a location, searches result in data that is specifically-tailored to that location.
“We are excited to introduce Google’s new mobile search service, which will make it easier and faster for people to find what they are looking for anytime, anywhere,” said Steve Cheng, Google Mobile’s search product manager. “With millions of mobile phones in use worldwide, our goal is to make the Google search experience even more useful and relevant for users on the go.”
“The service, which is already available in the US, was launched quietly last week. From tomorrow, however, all traffic to Google from mobile phones in Britain, Canada, France and Germany will be directed to the new pages.”
Previously, Google’s mobile search offered a search box and several radio buttons for different types of results — images, news, web and so on. Under the new system, Google has mingled all types of results together, and organized it based on what mobile users are most likely to be looking for.
Another tweak is the way the service handles local information — another main interest of mobile users. Previously, to get local search results, a user would have to enter a postcode along with the search terms and then scroll down to the local business listings button.
Now, a user has only to enter the postcode once, and all subsequent searches will remember that location. For instance, a search for a term such a restaurant, coffee shop or weather will take users straight to relevant local information.
The Silicon Valley Company is targeting the mobile industry as a huge potential growth area, and has set up phone engineering groups in North America and the UK to develop new applications, based in Waterloo, Canada, and at the company’s Mountain View HQ in California, as well as a rapidly expanding 80-strong team of engineers in London.
Last year, the firm launched an operating system for mobile phones called Android; a new open source phone operating system which it hopes will be adopted by manufacturers and can challenge existing software such as Symbian, used by Nokia, and Microsoft’s Windows Mobile.
The market certainly has massive potential: Google estimates that there are 2 billion mobile handsets with some sort of data access, and Research Company D2 Mobile suggests that the worldwide mobile advertising spend could rise from £500m to more than £4bn by 2012.
Burke added that Google was “looking at all options” in its quest to deliver better quality search results based on the location of the user.
Mobile search does not yet incorporate location awareness, but relies on the user to enter that information. On the other hand, Google Maps for Mobile, an application developed by Google’s London-based research team, automatically estimates the user’s location based on their nearest mobile mast. Such functionality may eventually be built into mobile search, although Google hasn’t officially announced it yet.
“All we have said officially is that we are interested in location for all our mobile services,” said a spokesman. “That is clearly the direction we are heading.”
The internet search giant now aims to provide the most relevant results from across the range of information sources.
“The big thing that people will notice is that they just get the results they want, without them having to think ahead of time what sort of information they are looking for,” a spokesman said.
“You do not have to click through so many pages on that tiny little screen and on those tiny little buttons.”
He added: “Mobile search is more about seeking than browsing.”
“If you are looking to buy a digital camera then you are not going to do all the research for it on your mobile phone — it is not practical.”
“But if you are looking for a restaurant and you are out and about, it is as easy to access the number and address on your phone as it is to call a directory service.”
Google’s 80-strong London mobile-development team focuses on standalone mobile applications such as Picasa, Maps, Mail, Calendar, News, Blogger, Reader and Docs, all of which are available to UK mobile users.
The company also has mobile teams in Mountain View, California, responsible for the mobile-search effort — and in Waterloo, Canada.
“Google is also experimenting with new features for its online search engine, including offering results in the form of a timeline or map.”