This past Friday, Google rolled out a few new updates to its flagship iOS app that will really streamline your content creation and discovery. One of the most useful updates is a brand new “Trending Searches” interface, which pops up whenever a user touches the search box. A dropdown menu appears, showing recent search queries that are trending nearby.
This feature is perfect for finding breaking stories before seeing them on social media or news sites, and it seems to be part of Google’s new in-your-face approach to pushing news to its users. This has the potential to act as a mini Twitter feed for people who use the app on a regular basis.
Another new update to the app is “Smart Answers” which takes the auto-fill query feature one step further by actually populating answers before the user hits “search”. It’s similar to the Quick Answers box on a desktop search and features data from Google’s own Knowledge Graph. The information comes from sites such as Wikipedia and other top-rated sources.
What do you think of the new updates? Do you usually use a browser to search, or do you prefer the convenience and ease of the Google app?