Inside Search: December 2015

Inside Search

The official Google Search blog

Make your holidays a little easier with Now on Tap

December 15, 2015

Between gift shopping, traveling, and party-going and party-hosting, there’s a lot to do this time of year. With Now on Tap on Android phones, everything is a little bit easier. Today we’re making some updates to Now on Tap to help you out during the holiday season and year round.
On airport pick-up duty? If your cousin sends you a text with his flight number, simply tap and hold your phone’s home button to get info on flight status without a separate search. Your text message is still right there, so you can respond easily after a quick peek.

If you need make sure all the last-minute gifts you ordered online will make it under the tree on time, tapping and holding on your confirmation email will display tracking info for your package.
And just because it’s the holidays doesn’t mean the news slows down (well, maybe a little). When reading a news article about Justin Trudeau or Ronda Rousey, tap and hold to get links to related articles so you can learn more. Plus, you’ll now see a share icon when you use Now on Tap to easily share what’s on your screen, without having to leave what you’re doing. You should start seeing all these features over the coming days.

Finally, for those of you French, German, Spanish, Italian, Russian or Korean speakers—Now on Tap is now at your fingertips too. Of course, we’ll continue to add more languages and features soon. Posted by Aneto Okonkwo, Product Manager

Google

Labels: Search Blog

7 things to try by voice with the Google app on Android

December 10, 2015

You can talk to more and more of your tech gadgets today, whether it’s your phone or your watch or your car or your TV or … you get the point. For the Google app, that includes things like calling, texting, setting reminders, and for a lot of you, setting your alarm.

Once you’re up at 7 am, you’ve got a lot of time to do even more. So, here are a few of our favorite new ways (some are hot off the press in just the past few weeks) to get help from Google by just speaking.
1. Turn on the tunes.

Whether you’re the DJ at the holiday party or just chilling by the fireside, Google can help. Ask to play music from a specific artist, for your general mood (“party music”), or for the activity you’re doing and you’ll be taken to a curated playlist on Google Play Music. Or, if you want Google to play music from another music app, just specify where (“on Spotify”).
2. Switch off. You can still ask Google to get things done for you while offline.

You can still ask Google to do things for you when you’re offline – or just having a bad (connection) day. Play music, turn up the volume, open apps, dim the screen, or switch Bluetooth and airplane mode on and off.
3. Ask Google to find and play videos on YouTube.

When you’re in the YouTube app and enable Google to recognize when you say “Ok Google” from any screen, you can use voice actions to find what you need, pick out the video you want from a list, skip and more — all hands-free.
4. Book your holiday flights.

The holidays have crept up on you and you haven’t nailed down your plans yet? Ask Google to show you flights, destinations, and prices; then finish the booking on your preferred website. And don’t be shy — ask Google follow-up questions to compare flights on different days and different times of day. Find a nonstop business class flight or one that connects through a specific airport.
5. Get things done in other apps.

Voice actions don’t just work within Google’s apps — we’ve worked with a handful of partners this year to create custom ways for you to command some popular apps. For example, ask Google to “Shazam this song,” “Log 400 calories for lunch on Lose It,” or even “Find a hotel on Orbitz.” Hungry for more? Get some inspiration here.
6. Get cooking.

Let’s face it: tapping and typing doesn’t work when your hands are covered in flour or pasta sauce. Try asking Google to find you that recipe you’re looking for by voice, so you can finish off your delicious frittata -- without covering your phone in egg yolk.
7. Be vague. Speak human.

We all make mistakes, Google included. If the Google app transcribes something you said incorrectly, say so! You can either spell the correction out, as in, “no I meant W-A-L-E-S”, or suggest a word be replaced entirely: “what about dolphins?”. Talk to the Google app as naturally as you would if it were human -- it’s designed to understand conversation that way.
We’re not done building out voice features just yet! If you’re ever curious to learn more tricks, just take a look here to learn about everything you can ask the Google app.
Posted by Steve Cheng, Director of Product Management

Google

Labels: Search Blog

AMP Project’s fast mobile pages coming to Google Search

December 10, 2015

In October, we announced the launch of the Accelerated Mobile Pages project, an open source initiative which aims to dramatically improve the performance of the mobile web. We know that on the web speed is critical and research shows that 40% of people abandon a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load.
Speed is something Google understands at its core and with Google Search, our focus has always been on getting people the right answers to their questions as quickly as possible.
For the past few months we’ve been running a public experiment at g.co/ampdemo to demonstrate how AMP pages work in Google search results on a mobile device. During this experiment, we’ve seen tremendous excitement and engagement from the publishing community and are excited to announce that AMP pages will be coming to search for everyone as soon as late February.

Since this is the open web, all you need to get started is to create your first AMP page.Content you publish to your sites today will be eligible to show up in the demo now, and soon in Google search. We encourage publishers to get started today to be ready.
The AMP project is working to make the mobile web experience better for everyone, and it is thrilling to be part of this industry-wide effort to reshape how content is consumed online.Posted by David Besbris Vice President, Engineering Search