Google desktop users have long been familiar with a spinning carousel of information underneath certain search results, now the concept has been added to mobile.
The tech giant added a carousel to its mobile search results page this Thursday, and it should make it easier to find the information that you are looking for. Only users of Google.com in English will be able to see the new feature at the moment, writes Angela Moscaritolo of PC Mag.
Faster search times
The carousel basically groups Google results together by source, speeding up the search process.
“Whether you’re looking for the latest clips from The Daily Show, news about the possibility of Greece leaving the Eurozone, or highlights from today’s Panthers game against the Canadiens, it can be hard to sift through all the great videos, articles, and more out there to find what interests you,” Google Search Product Manager Ardan Arac wrote on Thursday. “Now, if you search on Google on your mobile, you’ll see the freshest, most relevant content from within a single website grouped together in one easy-to-scan place.”
A search for the New York Knicks will pull up content from the NBA team’s official site, as well as pages from ESPN or Bleacher Report, for example. At the moment the feature is only working for certain sites, but Google says that more sites will be added shortly.
More ad revenues for Google?
A quick test by Kevin C. Tofel of Gigaom revealed that the same results were displayed in a mobile web browser as in Google’s mobile search app. He goes on to write that it may end up helping Google as well as mobile searchers, because “more time spent in Google’s search engine brings more opportunity for mobile users to click ads and help Google monetize its mobile efforts.”
Keep an eye out for the carousel being made available for more sites, as well as potentially in other languages. It will be interesting to see if Google does successfully manage to monetize its mobile operations, and how much of a role the carousel could play in that.
