Google is more than just a search giant. It’s an internet giant. From humble beginnings, Google has grown, and its empire now includes mobile and desktop operating systems, all manner of AI-filled hardware, mobile phone and tablet production, and all sorts of popular apps and programs like Google Maps, Google Mail, and Google Chrome. Search still sits at the heart of it all, though, which makes this latest announcement from Google a little surprising.
Google is dropping search results from queries relating to time, conversions, and math
For many people, Google is the internet. Rather than typing in a web domain, they’ll simply throw the name of the site into Google and then click on the first result. The same goes for basic tasks like simple calculations, conversions, or time-zones. Why bother opening up your calculator when you can simply type “18 times 47” into Google? Why bother opening a world clock when you can simply ask Google “what time is it Barcelona?” This is exactly what a lot of people do, they go straight to Google.
Google has announced that this user experience is about to change, and that search results are going to be dropped from the results it serves up. When somebody asks Google a question about time, math, or a conversion Google will simply show the answer to the query. The only other thing visible on the page will be a button to show the search results that otherwise would have been shown.
In a statement to Search Engine Land, Google said of the change:
“As always, our goal with search is to help people quickly find the most relevant information. For queries where we have extremely high confidence that a user is seeking a calculation, unit conversion or local time, we will show a single result to improve load time on mobile. Since our initial experiment in February, we worked to remove ads and improve the triggering quality for this experience to be sure that we’re serving users what they’re looking for, and we will still provide the option to tap to see more results.”
Google ran a similar experiment earlier this year, but they pulled it after a week due to negative feedback. For example, some brands weren’t showing up when people typed their name into the search engine. Google has tried to address these issues before pushing ahead with this new roll-out of the zero answers feature.
This is all bad news for people who run sites offering answers to these simple types of search query. Google will no longer show their sites in a list of search results unless the user makes an extra click to bring up the list of results. For users though, this just cements the idea that Google is the tool for everything that is committed to helping us find the answers we’re looking for as quickly and as easily as possible.
