Search engines like Google, Yahoo or Bing are our trusted source of information nowadays. It doesn’t matter that we don’t know the exact address for a website or that we’re not even sure what we are looking for: Ask them and they will give you an answer. Or many, as it is. But search engines haven’t always been as they are today. As the technology advances, input ways for searching evolve too. We are no longer required to be highly specific in our searches, as we don’t need to pay attention to our grammar or punctuation any more. Search engines have now spellcheckers that understand what you meant even if you didn’t spell it correctly and that ignore punctuation. This and many other fetaures to refine searches, like excluding elements, specifying the file type or the site, search by location, search for images, etc., make searches more easy to perform than ever.
But there are even more advances to those mentioned above. Mobile devices are changing the way we search, and are forcing search engines to adapt to the media. While some functionalities are shared with ‘desktop’ search engines, their mobile counterparts include some other features that are exclusive of the mobile environment. Here are some of the most
Both Google and Bing include voice recognition as one of the search features for their mobile browsers. You just need to activate it and ask the device what you are searching for.
Google mobile offers the option of searching with images instead of with words. With Google Goggles app, you just need to take a picture of the item you want to search for and it will look it up for you, with no need for typing.
Google has recently announced a new functionality that many people will find useful when searching in their mobile devices: handwritting recognition. This is a very functional feature, as writing is sometimes difficult in mobile devices.
If you share your location with your preferred search engine, it will give you back results based on your location. If this is not the case, you can always specify where do you want the results from.
Type ‘weather’ + your location in your search engine and you will get a complete forecast for that location.
The flight times feature shows departure and landing times when you type in an airline and flight number. The same happens with films showtimes for the location specified.
Google Instant on mobile
This feature by Google, now available on mobile, displays actual search results as you type, instead of predictions, making search faster.
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