Google mobile search: the evolution of the Google search

For many years, the mobile search played a slightly more minor role in the Google universe. Then came the great mobile boom. Of course, this sudden growth in the use of mobile devices didn’t go unnoticed by the search engine giant residing in Mountain View, Cali­for­nia in the USA. And in 2015, Google saw the first official shift of power as mobile devices finally re­gistered more Google searches than sta­tion­ary desktops.

The mobile search has been con­stantly changing since then. Using the standard desktop search as a model, Google’s mobile search has become in­creas­ingly faster and more precise, improving the company’s ability to answer the queries of mobile users. This has become more and more chal­len­ging. In recent years, the smart­phone has become an integral part of everyday life and this means user habits have changed quite drastic­ally from what they were like five or ten years ago. This changing reliance on smart­phones has put increased ex­pect­a­tions on search engines – user ex­per­i­ence and usability are two of the most important factors for Google’s mobile search. So Google isn’t just having to con­stantly prepare new mobile advert formats, it’s also got to contend with in­nov­at­ive features and continual testing to try and get the Google app and the mobile search engine up to the standards of the desktop staple.

Google wasn’t caught off guard by the mobile boom – it had re­cog­nised the in­creas­ing potential and im­port­ance of the mobile world long ago. The Cali­for­ni­an company used its strong market presence to secure a central role in the mobile internet industry. By the time the Android operating system for mobile devices came to market in 2008, this position of strength was con­sol­id­ated. Over 80% of mobile devices now run with Google’s operating system.

But obtaining this system was just the basis; Google had many other avenues to explore. Numerous ap­plic­a­tions like Google Maps or the Chrome mobile browser became available for smart­phones. To promote these products, Google created the Google Play Store, which can also be in­teg­rated into a search engine. Before long, a whole smart­phone created with built-in Google products as ap­plic­a­tions and functions came onto the market in the form of the Nexus One. Tablets and updated versions soon followed. This final part of the strategy demon­strated that Google wanted to make the term ‘mobile internet’ in­sep­ar­able from its own brand name and products. In addition to its powerful position in the mobile industry and all its new products and services, there’s one thing Google has achieved which might just be the most sig­ni­fic­ant of all: access to valuable user data that has helped to improve their services sig­ni­fic­antly and develop their mobile ad­vert­ising model.

Since its found­a­tion in 1998, the Google search has been hall­marked by its con­tinu­ous de­vel­op­ment and change. Designers and de­velopers at Google work daily on the op­tim­isa­tion of the user ex­per­i­ence, with many of their new ideas resulting in tests carried out on a chosen subject group of Google users. Some changes are more obvious, while some are more subtle and con­spicu­ous, meaning that updates have had varying effects on the online marketing industry. In our overview of the Google evolution, we’ve summed up the mile­stones achieved through­out the Google story so far. In recent years, mobile search results have become more and more like their desktop cousins. Although there’s no huge dif­fer­ence between the content offered by each, the mobile search has to be handled dif­fer­ently because user ex­per­i­ence and user behaviour are very different when users switch between desktops and smart­phones.

Another example of built-in smart­phone tech­no­logy that the Google search takes advantage of is the mi­cro­phone and voice re­cog­ni­tion software. Whether it’s Siri on the iPhone or the in-house voice aid Google Now for Android devices – if you’d prefer not to type, you can always com­mu­nic­ate with your phone via the voice re­cog­ni­tion tool. Voice searches are becoming more and more common, par­tic­u­larly across the pond. According to official figures from Google, voice searches via mobile devices make up around 20% of the overall search queries in America, and they're starting to become a feature in the UK as well. Digital language as­sist­ants aren’t just becoming more important for Google searches either – they’re more and more common across devices used at home. Voice Search and Voice Control are in­ter­est­ing topics that SEO experts should pay attention to moving forward.

More and more mobile searches in the past year have featured a new icon: a little lightning bolt and the letters ‘AMP’. AMP stands for Ac­cel­er­ated Mobile Pages and stands for extra quick content loading time. By the end of 2015, Google had launched this open source ini­ti­at­ive to promote more stream­lined content. At first, AMP was only found in headline areas, but now the AMP icon is com­mon­place in standard web searches too. The idea behind this is that stream­lined content is lighter and so improves the per­form­ance of the mobile end device. By reducing amounts of code and using a Content Delivery Network (CDN), pages load up to four times as fast and only need around a tenth of their previous data volume.

According to Google, around 150 million AMP documents have already been indexed, with around 4 million new ones being added every week. AMP is likely to be the new standard for mobile websites in future, but at present they have no influence on search engine ranking. But, given their improved speed and lowered loading times, mobile websites with AMP are sure to profit from better ranking in the near future.

In some fields, web operators can provide the Google Bot with ad­di­tion­al in­form­a­tion through struc­tured data, for example with recipes or events. This in­form­a­tion is then displayed as a preview in the search engine results pages in the form of a ‘snippet’. This means that the user gets all the relevant in­form­a­tion they need in one snapshot – and Rich Snippets are easily dis­tin­guish­able from normal search results. Rich Cards are even clearer, with a beautiful structure and present­a­tion that appeals to users straight away.

These new optical designs should improve user ex­per­i­ence even further and enable an optimal present­a­tion of content. Rich Cards present content in the form of an in­form­a­tion­al carousel that users see at the top of the mobile search before other standard results.

At present, Rich Cards are reserved for recipes and films – but the plan is to roll them out for other types of content as well, which is par­tic­u­larly important news for e-commerce and marketing experts. Mark-ups like products and events will surely have their own Rich Cards category present­a­tion in the not-to-distant future. At the same time as their new Rich Cards creation, Google has published an update to the testing tools for struc­tured data.