Search
Auto Added by WPeMatico
Google rolls out a better way to search for movies
Google is rolling out a new feature today that will help you better plan your night at the movies. While the company has supported displaying movie showtimes within Google Search results following the closure of its standalone movie site in 2016, this update will help you narrow down your options more efficiently, thanks to the additions of drop-down filters in the Movies Showtimes interface that appears at the top of Google’s search results.
After you perform a search for “showtimes” and are directed to Google’s Movies Showtimes screen as usual, you’ll notice a new set of drop-down filters at the top.
You can use these to filter the movies near you by a number of factors, including screen type (e.g. 3D or IMAX), the movie’s genre, ratings, the critic scores, language, and preferred chains. That way you could click a few buttons to do a very specific search for something like “Family” movies rated “PG” or “G” at Cobb or AMC theaters in the afternoon on Sunday, for example. Or “R” rated “Dramas” with a critics’ score of 70% or higher on Rotten Tomatoes.
The Critics’ Score filter supports reviews from Metacritic and IMDb, as well.
Once the filters are applied, you’ll be shown all the matching results that meet your exact criteria. When you’re ready to go, you can then click on the showtime you want to purchase your ticket using Fandango, MovieTickets.com, Atom Tickets, or the theaters directly. (Those supported on Google include AMC, Regal, Cinemark, and others.)
In addition to the showtime search filters, you can also now tap over to the “Theaters” tab to see what’s playing at your favorite theaters, that also matches your requirements.
Google says the update is rolling out to the Google Search app on Android in the U.S. and India in Hindi and English, as well as in mobile search in the browser, and soon, the Google Search app for iOS.
Powered by WPeMatico
Google begins to roll out mobile-first indexing
Google announced this morning its “mobile -first” indexing of the web is now starting to roll out, after a year and a half of testing and experimentation. Back in 2016, Google first detailed its plan to change the way its search index operates, explaining how its algorithms would eventually be shifted to use the mobile version of a website’s content to index its pages, as well as to understand its structured data and to show snippets from the site in the Google search results.
In December 2017, Google said it had begun to transition a small handful of sites to mobile-first indexing, but declined to say which properties had been made the move.
Mobile-first indexing means Google will use the mobile version of a web page “for indexing and ranking, to better help our – primarily mobile – users find what they’re looking for,” the company writes in a blog post.
By “primarily mobile,” Google is referring to the fact that the majority of people who use Google search today now do so from mobile devices, and have done so since 2015.
Google also explains that it will have one index for search results, not a mobile-first index that’s separate from its main index. In other words, it will start to look to the mobile web pages to index the web, not the desktop version.
Mobile-friendliness has long been one of the many factors in determining how a site is ranked, but it’s not the only factor. For example, there are times when a non-mobile friendly page still has the best information and will appear higher, Google says.
However, Google has begun to prioritize mobile sites in several ways. For example, it began to boost the rank of mobile-friendly webpages on mobile search results back in 2015, and more recently said it was adding a signal that uses page speed to help determine a page’s mobile search ranking. Starting in July 2018, slow-loading content will be downranked.
While Google today claims the mobile-friendly indexing won’t directly impact how content is ranked, it does note that having a site’s mobile-friendly content indexed in this new fashion will likely help the site “perform better” in mobile search results.
Google isn’t shifting all sites over to the new mobile-first indexing today – just the first wave.
Specifically, Google selected those sites that are already following the best practices for mobile-first indexing, it says. And it will favor the mobile version of the webpage over its own fast-loading AMP pages.
Those sites who have been shifted will be notified via Search Console, says Google, and will begin see increased visits from the Smartphone Googlebot. After the shift, Google will show the mobile version of the site’s pages in its Search results and in the Google cached pages.
Google tells the webmasters of sites that are not yet mobile-optimized to not panic yet. “If you only have desktop content, you will continue to be represented in our index,” assures the Google announcement.
The company did not specify when the rollout of the mobile-first indexing would complete.
Powered by WPeMatico
Lucidworks launches site search as a service tool
Lucidworks has been helping large organizations like Reddit with complex content build search tools that reach across massive content stores, but the company wanted to make the underlying search technology available to a wider market. Today, it released Lucidworks Site Search, a cloud service that enables companies to embed Lucidworks search in any application or website with a couple of lines… Read More
Powered by WPeMatico
Google will make page speed a factor in mobile search ranking starting in July
Google today announced a significant change in how it ranks websites for mobile searches: it will now take page speed into consideration as one of its signals, the company says. The change, which Google is referring to as the “Speed Update,” will go into effect in July 2018, and will downrank very slow websites under certain conditions. Though speed will become more of a factor… Read More
Powered by WPeMatico
Reddit teams with Lucidworks to build new search framework
Reddit revealed today that it has teamed with Lucidworks to provide a long-needed, modern search tool for the immensely popular online discussion platform. When you face the kind of scale that Reddit does with over 300 million monthly active users generating 5 million comments and a staggering 40 million searches every day across a more than a million communities, it’s a daunting task… Read More
Powered by WPeMatico
Google’s Search app on iOS gets a Twitter-like Trends feature, faster Instant Answers
Google’s search app on iOS is adding a Trending Searches feature, similar to Twitter or Facebook’s Trends, with an update that rolled out later in the day on Thursday. According to the app’s added “What’s New” text on the App Store, Google will now show you searches that are “trending around you” when you tap into the search box to start a search. Read More
Powered by WPeMatico
Slack beefs up its search to find the right person to ask a question
Slack wants to become a kind of lexicon of information, with everything easily accessible, and it’s starting to do that today with a big update to its search function. Facebook tests an enhanced local search and discovery feature offering business suggestions
Facebook is testing an enhanced local search feature that could see the social network creeping in on Google Maps, Foursquare and Yelp territory, TechCrunch learned and Facebook confirmed. Facebook users are now able to surface recommendations of nearby places – like “dinner nearby” or “bars nearby,” for example – by entering a query in… Read More
Powered by WPeMatico
Elastic brings order to its product line with Elastic Stack
For the last several years, Elastic has offered a range of analytics and visualization tools to go with its open source search engine. Today, it announced it was pulling those pieces together into an integrated stack. The new product known as Elastic Stack includes all of the company’s products: Elasticsearch, Kibana, Logstash and Beats. It’s available for download or as part of… Read More
Powered by WPeMatico
Google’s Search app on Android can now find content buried in your apps
More of the content we’re looking for is saved in mobile applications, which is why Google has been working to bring that information to the surface by indexing apps in search. Now, it will do the same thing on your phone, too. The company is introducing a new search mode in its Google app called “In Apps,” which will allow you to search inside your mobile applications for… Read More
Powered by WPeMatico