Google recently announced that they are adding several interesting new ways to be able to initiate a search.
Google Voice
One is the ability to be able to speak your query. Now this has been available for quite a while on Google Mobile, but has only just now been added to the standard web search functionality. We can see this feature being very popular with people who aren’t great at typing, and also when searching for words that you are not really sure how to spell.
Google Search By Image
The other new search functionality that was announced is called Search by Image. This allows you to start your Google search by providing an image rather than typing in or speaking your search. There are several different ways that you can tell Google what image you want it to search with:
- Drag and drop a picture from a web page or your computer onto the search box.
- Upload an image from your computer.
- Copy and paste the URL of an image on the web.
- Or if you install one of the new Chrome or Firefox plugins, you can simply right click on a picture in your web browser and choose to search for that image.
I can see myself using this feature extensively for researching travel destinations. I’d love to hear your ideas for other interesting uses of Search by Image in the comments section below.
Both of these new search features can help to make it easier to find certain types of information, and it is interesting to note that they both were available on your cellphone before they made it to Google’s standard desktop search.
Our research clearly shows that the percentage of website visitors coming from mobile platforms such as the iPhone, iPad and Android phones is growing at an amazing rate. The future of the internet is clearly mobile. If you have a website, is it mobile ready?