Search is getting a big upgrade with more visual-centric results and features that will appeal to the next-gen mobile users.
Google Search is the internet for most of you, and now Search is evolving to give you more granular details. Search is the latest product to pivot toward videos, which have now become the go-to medium for this generation.
The era of Tiktok and Reels has made it hard for Google to ignore the changing trends and Search is now going to see its effect. The Google Lens is already a big part of the visual search ecosystem for the search giant, and now it is mixing up things to give you text and visual search with better results.
The new feature called multisearch allows users to search, “using images and text simultaneously, similar to how you might point at something and ask a friend a question about it,” Google explained in its blog post. The feature was in beta and now it is expanding support to more than 70 languages, which will be available in the coming months. So the next time you find an item like a book, or a plant, and want to buy it from a nearby store, multisearch will be there to help you.
Translate is the next Google product to see the impact of visual search. “We’re now able to blend translated text into the background image thanks to a machine learning technology called Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs). So if you point your camera at a magazine in another language, for example, you’ll now see translated text realistically overlaid onto the pictures underneath,” the blog post adds.
And finally, you have Maps, the most crucial tool used for search these days. The immersive view is coming to Google Maps, so users can get a better sense of a place before they visit. “You can zoom into the neighbourhood and restaurant to get a feel for what it might be like at the date and time you plan to meet up, visualizing things like the weather and learning how busy it might be,” the feature highlights explained.
Google says there will be more changes and improvements done on Search, and it is obvious that the company is rather concerned about the impact of TikTok on its business, so bringing more visual elements could help its growth in the future.