Commentary

Google's In-App Searches Will Make In-App Ads More Accurate

Google, the search company that knows all your passwords, shopping preferences, and pertinent medical and financial information, announced this week that it's building a search function into its app that will allow it to search through other apps on your phone.

Being able to identify shopper intent -- how and why users use certain apps -- is valuable information that will help advertisers be more accurate with their ads.

Which is not to say that the basic function of an app isn’t a giant clue to a given users’ intent, but that adding search signals to something with a specific function, like an app, can really only mean more accuracy.

Google has been working hard to index the information contained in apps so that it can be searchable. The in-app search mode will be able to find music, videos, contacts, messages, tasks, notes, and other things like that.

Google has been indexing apps so that they’ll appear in search results on the Web since 2013. However, these new searches happen directly on the phone’s operating system, which means that in-app searches can only occur on Android phones at the moment. It also means searches can happen offline.

The new search function only works on Gmail, Spotify and YouTube so far, but Google says it’s working on adding Facebook Messenger, LinkedIn, Evernote, Glide, Todoist, and Google Keep in the coming months.

Now Google just has to get people to use the Google App so this function will have a purpose.

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