Google discovered that many of its users would like to know other people’s opinions on the content of a web page. Therefore, as part of a new experiment in its Search Labs, Google has enabled the ability to add notes to your search results. The company believes this could help you find what you’re looking for more easily.
If you you subscribe To try the new tool, you’ll see buttons to add and view them below the search results. In the Google app, notes will also appear below articles in Discover. When creating one, You can choose between several fonts, add images and stickers.
Google tries to refresh its searches at a key moment. It is not only the emergence of new artificial intelligence chatbots to make queries. Already last year, Prabhakar Raghavan, senior vice president of Google, recognized that young people are increasingly turning to TikTok and Instagram to perform specific searches.
“Our goal with this new Labs experiment is to provide access to useful advice on an article or topic from both experts and everyday people,” said Brad Kellett, senior director of Google Search, in the Blog of the company, about the new function to add notes. The expectation is that they will help the public identify the most relevant information and see what worked for other people.
What will Google Notes moderation be like?
The test, in principle, is enabled for users in the United States and India. When you select the “view notes” option, Google will show you a feed with all the notes added so far. Unlike Reddit, these notes are intended to be much more engaging, Google says. In fact, wait enable “soon” in the US the option to add images generated by artificial intelligence.
The million dollar question: how will you manage to moderate this content? If you post a note, it should appear “within minutes,” Google Vice President Cathy Edwards told The Verge. The notes will be organized in the feed depending on the query you have made and the relevance they have to the content of the page.
Google explained, however, that some websites will not offer the ability to add notes. For example, those focused on sensitive or unreliable information. When the link does allow it, each note will go through a classification system to determine if the note contains content that may violate Google policies. If so, you’ll flag that note for someone to review before posting it live. Users will also be able to report notes for review.
The notes will remain on the open web, which means they will be indexed by Google systems. If the project is successful, the company said, They may also influence the search algorithm. In the coming months, they will provide more information to site owners about notes added to their content.
New option to follow interests and the “perspectives” filter
The notes are not the only novelty announced by Google this Wednesday. The technology company also presented two more tools: the “follow” option for topics of interest and the “perspectives” filter for the desktop.
The “follow” option will allow you to see batch results based on a specific topic. Google also enabled the option to receive notifications about things you follow from the Google app. The “follow” button will appear after performing a search, which can be as broad or specific as desired. The feature will roll out to the Google app, Chrome, and Safari for mobile devices in English in the United States in the coming weeks.
“Insights” shows only content from places like social networks and forums. The filter, announced initially in may, is available in English and for the US. In “the coming weeks”, it will also be available in desktop search in this country. And starting this Wednesday, the results will show more information about individual creators, such as a creator’s profile image or their number of followers.