Google Unveils Three New Search Tools
Google revealed three new search tools for users today that will make searching for information online a whole lot easier. Introducing Voice Search, Search by Image and Instant Pages, Google wants to continue to promote users thirst for knowledge.
Voice Search
Google’s Voice Search will allow mobile users to search easier. Instead of typing on a tiny touchscreen, users will be able to speak their query.
“You can just speak your query and the answer is on the way. We’ve invested tremendous energy into improving the quality of our recognition technology—for example, today we teach our English Voice Search system using 230 billion words from real queries so that we can accurately recognize the phrases people are likely to say,” said an official Google blog post.
Available on mobile and desktop search (for Chrome users), Voice Search you can simply click a microphone icon in the Google search box and speak your search.
Search by Image
Available on Google’s desktop search, Search by Image is easily accessible to users. A camera icon will be located in the Google search bar and from there users will be able to upload any picture or plug in an image URL to have Google try to identify the subject.
“Try it out when digging through old vacation photos and trying to identify landmarks—the search probably isn’t going to tell you where you were, but computer vision may just do the trick,” stated the Google blog.
Search by Image is launching globally in 40 languages with extensions for Chrome and Firefox to enable image search by right-clicking.
Instant Pages
Saving users an extra two to five seconds on typical searches, Instant Pages gets the top search result ready in the background while a user chooses which link to pursue.
“Let’s say you’re searching for information about the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, so you search for [dc folklife festival]. As you scan the results deciding which one to choose, Google is already prerendering the top search result for you. That way when you click, the page loads instantly,” said the Google blog post.
Instant Pages will prerender search results based on relevance technology and Google is confident it will accurately predict which page to prerender. Instant Pages will be released on the next beta release of Chrome.
