Google improves Search on mobiles, tablets

Search has been one of Google's most popular and successful services, and the search giant is constantly up at improving it. Yesterday, in an official blog post, Jeromy Henry, a User Experience Designer at Google announced that the search function on mobile and tablet had been improved. He affirms that Google Search has been about delivering answers that users seek, as quickly as possible. Google Search, as we know it today, is used for the most mundane queries such as the weather forecast, solving an equation or other straightforward metric conversions. Now, Google wants to make that experience richer and more beautiful. 

Flight details displayed prominently

Google reveals that now when users conduct a Google search using a mobile or tablet, they will notice improvements such as the results most relevant to them placed at the top in the search results. Elaborating further, Google adds that they have improved their flight status quick answer function. A user making a quick search will now notice that there is a flight progress indicator, and Google has increased the size of the text of arrival and departure times, in an attempt to allow users to quickly find the information they are looking for. 

See the conversions better

Other quick answer features that would be improved for mobile and tablets include finance, currency conversion, unit conversion, dictionary definitions, local time lookup, and holiday and sunrise times. Google explains that across all these options, it has attempted to simplify the experience to the effect that the user quickly finds the information that he or she are looking for. Giving an example, Google adds that when making unit conversions, the answer is displayed clearly for questions such as 'how many miles are 42 kilometers'. If a user wishes to convert another unit of measure, such as yards to miles, he or she can tap the card to see the full unit converter. 

The card-theme in the improved search for mobile and tablet users is similar to what Google did with Google Now, which it announced at Google I/O 2012 conference. Google Now, essentially is a new real-time search interface for Android users. The search feature is card-based and users can bring up cards containing the data they require in real-time. Google Now claims to give all the relevant information in a single swipe. 

Google finally adds that it is rolling out these improvements on Google.com and in English. It indicates that similar improvements are in the pipeline for desktop, and international users as well.

Recently we had reported about a study finding that India came second only to the U.S., in terms of education-related search queries. In 2008, India ranked 8th in this respect. The results of the study were compiled using Google search query patterns, and an offline research by TNS Australia on behalf of Google India, which was conducted across seven Indian cities - New Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, Ahmedabad, Kolkata, Hyderabad and Bangalore. The study found that more than 60 percent of the Indian students with Internet access used the Internet as their primary source for researching information about educational courses and institutes.