“Search outside the box”: this invited to Google in invitations to the 2022 edition of the Search On event, precisely dedicated to the news relating to what remains the company’s core business. In Italian it means looking outside the box, and in some way it means do research (and consult the results) in a different way from what we have been used to so far.
And that’s why one of the most important announcements, in our opinion, concerns the features that Google has called Find Inspiration and above all Drill Down, for now intended only for English: the intention is to enrich search results and push people to go beyond the first page. To go to the bottom, in short: “We know that many stop at the first results, and therefore we have decided to make more interesting even those that come later, to entice them to scroll ”, explained from Mountain View. The purpose (and effect) is twofold, even if not openly stated:
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hinder the often misleading and incorrect work of who writes the sites based on the SEO languageprecisely to stay at the top of the search results and be clicked;
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push users to stay on the page, making them scroll, scroll and scroll endlessly, which is then the main goal of more or less any site. And patience if you end up being a victim of doom-scrolling (things?).
To do this, Google will embellish the results pages with photos and videos as well, making them very, very similar to the feed of any social network, to be scrolled to find inspiration. Obviously vertically and on the smartphone, which by now for the vast majority of people has replaced the computer as a tool for accessing the Networkso much so that the whole presentation took place only by showing the appearance of the various news on mobile phone displays.
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The use of artificial intelligence for Maps
In general, Google will further enhance what it calls Visual Search, that is, the search for and with images, relying on the features that have been the basis of Lens since 2017, on which 8 billion searches are made per month. The latest novelty is called Multisearch and allows you to photograph something (or take a screenshot of something) and write the search query directly above, so as to have results on that specific image: it is already available in English and “will be available in over 70 languages within a few months”.
There will also be improvements for the tips as you type the questions and for the Shortcutsthe shortcuts that (for example) allow you to get to ecommerce sites if you are looking for something that you can buy, but the aspects that seemed most interesting to us concern Mapswhich he will receive in the coming months 4 novelties, which are added to the Eco-friendly itineraries.
The first is called Neighborhood Vibe and is largely based on the 20 million daily updates that people make on Maps: when you are in a city and looking for information on what to do, where to eat, what to see, the app will suggest places with the help of photos and information shared by Local Guides around the world. The idea is to allow people to feel at home even when they are not at home and the feature will be “available in the coming months on Android and iOS”.
Then there are Aerial View and Immersive View, both of which are based on artificial intelligence and Google’s computational capabilities. The first, already available for 250 locations around the worldallows you to virtually fly over monuments or significant places to see them up close, with the AI that will fill any gaps in the satellite images to return a reproduction as faithful as possible to the original. Immersive View will work in a similar way: available “in the next few months” in Los Angeles, London, New York, San Francisco and Tokyo, it will somehow allow time travel, in the sense that you can search for information on a street in these cities and see it today as it will be at a certain time of a certain day of a certain monthwith the AI showing passersby, traffic and weather conditions how (they are expected) to be.
In the end, Search con Live View: the excellent augmented reality navigation tool, which has been active on Maps for yearsit will become somewhat proactive and allow you to get information about what is around simply lifting the smartphone and framing the surroundings. It will work (for example) for information on shops, ATMs and restaurants, starting with cities like London, New York, Paris, San Francisco and Tokyo.