New ways to find just what you need on Search
What should I wear with wide-leg pants in the winter? How do you start a solo landscaping business in Minnesota? Which bulk meal prep tips are most useful for a vegetarian family?
No matter how specific the topic, there’s almost always someone out there looking for information about it — and hopefully, there’s someone else with knowledge that can help. Search has always been about connecting the vastness of human curiosity with the incredible expanse of human wisdom that’s found on the web.
Search will never be a solved problem; it continues to evolve and improve alongside our world and the web. Today, we’re introducing some of these improvements to help you find the information that’s most helpful just for you, no matter how unique or individual your question.
A more tailored Search experience
To help you more easily keep up with searches or topics you come back to a lot, or want to learn more about, we’re introducing the ability to follow exactly what you’re interested in. From your favorite sports team to something more specific, like vegan cooking, you’ll see more useful information related to what you care about across Search, with less effort.
Let’s say you’re training for your first half marathon, and you’ve come to Search looking for tips on getting in better running shape. Tap the “Follow” button in search results and you’ll automatically see articles and videos about marathon training on Discover, the homepage of the Google app. From Discover, you can jump right to the search results page to see more new-to-you content and perspectives related to what you follow, like a video demonstrating a training exercise.
If you have notifications turned on, we may update you if we find something particularly timely or important, like how to prepare for an upcoming race nearby. And you’re always in control of what you follow: You can easily update or unfollow your interests at any time.
As with all information on Search, our systems will look to show the most helpful, relevant and reliable information possible when you follow a topic. We'll take the same approach to surfacing high quality information, based on factors like expertise, experience, authoritativeness and trustworthiness. This new capability is rolling out on the Google app and Chrome and Safari on mobile in English in the U.S. over the coming weeks.
Starting later this year, we’ll also make it easier to find and visit your favorite sites. For example, if you’ve searched for something a few times, like DIY instructions for a backyard project, and keep returning to the same web page, our systems will recognize that and bring the site to the top of the search results page. As always, you can see which results are personalized and easily access personal settings by clicking on the three dots next to any web link.
Even more firsthand knowledge in Search
One of the best ways to get information that works for your specific needs is to find someone with firsthand experience. We’re introducing a few updates to make it easier for people to find and share their insights with others on Search.
This May, we added new ways to find and explore diverse perspectives on Search in the Google app and mobile web. In the coming weeks, we’ll bring the perspectives filter to desktop Search, so you can choose to exclusively see content from people on social media platforms, forums and other communities. And starting today, we’ll show new information on search results that highlights information about the individual creator — like their social handle, follower count or the popularity of their content — so it’s easier to find content from creators you care about.
As part of this work, we’ve also rolled out a series of ranking improvements to show more first-person perspectives in results, so it’s easier to find this content across Search.
Notes: A new experiment in Search Labs
With the sea of information on the web, it isn’t always easy to know what content is going to be most helpful for you. So we’re introducing a new experiment in Search Labs to help people learn from the experiences of others on the web. With Notes, we're exploring a new way to share tips and advice about web content, right on Search. We’ve seen in our research that people want peer validation and like to see what others are saying about a given web page. Notes gives people a helpful layer of human insights on each Search result, working hand in hand with existing content on the web and making it more useful.
Whether you’re an artist in North Dakota or a teacher in Mumbai, we want to help you find exactly what you’re looking for — and to share your knowledge with the world. We hope these updates make staying on top of your interests, learning new skills, and sharing with others just a little bit easier.
