Google is the most popular search engine on the planet (and perhaps on other planets too), there’s no doubt about it… No one is saying “Yahooing” or “Binging” (maybe just Spiderman), however, “Googling” is already an unofficial coined verb in the English lingo.
For obvious reasons, the folks at Google just wants to intensify to correlation between their brand name and web search, and to implement this more-than-verbal conquest they are now up to a few kinds of new shenanigans. Even Spiderman is beginning to get ensnared in the Googlish cobweb…
Expanding The Knowledge Graph
Google’s Knowledge Graph, which presented to the world back in May, is one of the most aspiring projects Google ever ventured (and those guys tries a lot of things). It essentially makes the engine understand actual entities and not just connect simple textual elements on the web with the requested query.
Until now, only people who were searching in Google U.S. site could have enjoyed this bionic initiative. But from this day onwards, the Knowledge Graph features will begin showing up in all English-speaking countries too, tailored with the unique attributes and cultural differences of each country.
Additionally, Google will now connect the Knowledge Graph to the auto-complete feature in the search box. For example (as presented by Google), when you start typing in the search box for the query [rio], Google will offer the different possible entities related to that term:
The last new feature of the Knowledge Graph is the “Carousel”. When a user will type a query which relates to many entities (such as [baseball players] or [restaurants in miami]), on the top of the results page will appear a visual list of those related entities. Watch the following video to learn more about the Knowledge Graph’s Carousel:
Personalizing Search With Gmail
It isn’t a secret that Google is trying to make the search experience more personalized. With Search Plus Your World which connects the user’s Google+ data with the search results, the reactions were pretty frigid to say the least. So now, Google is piloting a new way for more personalized results, based on the user’s Gmail account.
The new Gmail-search personal search trial suppose to surface results from the user’s private email account whenever conducting a search and there might be some related answers in Gmail. The Gmail results will show up on the right sidebar and here how it suppose to look like:
In addition to the sidebar Gmail results, Google also testing a new feature which will grab the user’s flight data from Gmail and will display them on the results page when searching for [my flights]. All those Gmail results features are still being experimented and if you want to try them you can sign up here.
Voice Search Coming To iOS
Over the last couple of years there wasn’t too much love between Apple and Google. Now, Google just gave Apple another reason to hate it. It is releasing a new voice search feature to Google search iOS app which will make it in many ways a direct competitor to Apple’s Siri. The worst thing for Apple is that it will be available right inside their own manufactured mobile devices.
Very much like Siri, with the new Voice Search feature users can click on the microphone icon on the app and ask their questions aloud. Then, the app will shoot back the answer both visually and vocally. You can see a demonstration of how it works on the following video:
