Google introduces host of search improvements

Advances in mobile search are now leading to changes in desktop search. On a mobile phone, users can search using their voice or by using a picture. Now that same functionality is available on desktops to get even faster results.

Voice Search on mobile devices has been around since 2008, but at the Inside Search press event in San Francisco today, Google announced that Voice Search will now be available on the desktop. Voice search has become so common on mobile devises that it’s only natural to bring that functionality to the desktop. Google says that Voice Search is especially helpful for long search queries, such as “pictures of big wave surfing in Waimea Bay” or for words that are hard to spell like “Schenectady, New York”.

“You should never have to stop and ask yourself, ‘Can I speak for this?’—it should be ubiquitous and intuitive,” said Google Fellow Amit Singhal. “So we’ve added speech recognition into search on desktop for Chrome users. If you’re using Chrome, you’ll start to see a little microphone in every Google search box. Simply click the microphone, and you can speak your search.”

Search by Image on desktop was also rolled out during the event and it allows users to perform a search using an image. This is helpful when words aren’t quite enough to help users find an answer. Users will be able to click the camera icon in the image search box and upload a photo from their computer or paste the URL of an image from the Web. Users can also simply drag and drop pictures into the search box.

Google is rolling out Search by Image globally, but it will only be available in Chrome.  Chrome or Firefox extensions that allow users to right click on an image to search for more information are also available.