Closely following the demonstration of Google Now On Tap at I/O last month, Google has unleashed another step forward for search, with Google apparently launching location aware search results.
At the SMX conference in France, Danny Sullivan from Search Engine Land tweeted a video of the location aware search, with examples shown including asking ‘Ok Google’:
- What is the name of this park?
- How big is this lake?
- What is the name of this stream?
More examples of Google Location Aware Search that's amazing. Do these yourself on Android or iOS pic.twitter.com/sn8pu0xzCA
— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) June 9, 2015
The update appears to be live at least for some people, with no updates to the Google app (at least no recent updates on my phone), with searches locally for ‘What is the name of this shopping centre?’ and ‘What is the name of this building?’ bringing up relevant results immediately. Other contextual searches such as what time does ‘XXXX’ cafe open weren’t as successful, but with no official announcement from Google as yet, we don’t know what is included.
It’s prudent to point out that this isn’t Google Now On Tap, simply location aware search. It’s fun, helpful, but for the tinfoil hat brigade out there, Google Search just got a little bit creepy.
