Google Update: Streaming App Content in Mobile Search Results
Google’s Jennifer Lin said in an interview, “When Google got started, Search meant sitting at your desktop and finding the best information on websites. Today, you’re more likely to be searching on your mobile device, and the best answers may be buried in an app… perhaps one that you don’t even have installed yet. Finding information in apps is still too hard”.
Google Moving Towards Mobile
Since Mobilegeddon last April, Google’s updates have been moving very obviously towards mobile. This is because more and more people are searching from mobile devices than from a desktop. In fact, Google updated its search quality rater guidelines last week and also Google Shopping results, favoring more towards a better mobile experience.
We recently revised our rater guidelines to adapt to our mobile world. Read more on our blog→https://t.co/5BUfa6piQC pic.twitter.com/yekrhBqd4V
— Google Webmasters (@googlewmc) November 19, 2015
Aside from a website’s mobile-friendliness, Google also added app indexing as a ranking signal in mobile search results.
Streaming Apps from Search
Mobile users should now be able to “stream” apps from search assuming they have good WiFi connection. This allows them to not have to go to the app or download it.
“We started indexing the content of apps two years ago, so that when people search on Google, they can find the best results whether they’re in an app or on the web,” says Lin. Google now has over 100 billion deep links into apps in its index — including some popular apps like Facebook, Instagram, Airbnb or Pinterest.
“But up until now, Google has only been able to show information from apps that have matching web content. “Because we recognize that there’s a lot of great content that lives only in apps, starting today, we’ll be able to show some ‘app-first’ content in Search as well.”
How to Adapt to Google Catering to Mobile Experience
Since Google is clearly placing more and more importance on mobile apps, it is very important to move towards where Google is headed. The clearest takeaway of the streaming app content update is for businesses to consider creating an app (if this would help users and not just for the sake of having one). By providing content from a mobile app, with Google’s app indexing and with more people using mobile now, any business’ content can be made more visible to potential customers when Google streams content from apps in its search results.
