Google are expanding Search to make it more natural and intuitive

At Search On today Google showed off some new features for Search based on their AI developments. Google’s goal is to make Search more natural and intuitive so that they work as our brains would when searching and the new AI advancements do that.

Unfortunately, not everything that was announced today will be available at launch in Australia but one that will be is what they are calling Neighbourhood Vibe. Neighbourhood Vibe will be available in Maps and will help you find the most popular spots in a neighbourhood. Simple select a neighbourhood and you will see the most popular spots come to life.

The popular spots are surfaced using AI combined with local knowledge from Google Maps users who add map contributions each and every day in the form of reviews, photos and videos. Neighbourhood Vibe will be rolling out globally on both Android and iOS in the coming months.

Another new Search feature coming to Maps in the coming months is Immersive View. Immersive View helps put you into the city itself, providing you with the weather, traffic, and crowds for a given day and time. Unfortunately it will only be launching in Los Angeles, London, New York, San Francisco and Tokyo in the coming months. There is no word when this feature will expand to Australian cities — surely Melbourne is next?

Multisearch is a new Search feature rolling out in English globally, expanding visual search. The feature will allow you to take a photo or screenshot and add text to this yourself and then Search will search for not just the picture but also the text on the display. 70 other languages will gain support for this feature in the next few months.

Launching in the US only initially is a new feature that reorganises Google’s food information to surface the exact dish results you are looking for. Lens within the Google app is used to not only search a screenshot for an item but to add “near me” to it to find that item at one of your local eateries. With Google stating “initially,” it is likely that if successful in the US we will see this roll out to further countries in the coming months.

Search has a lot of features that we take for granted but also a lot that we don’t even know about. For more information on just what you can do with your Google Search head on over to their blogs (1, 2) to learn more.