Android users can now see apps in search results when searching on their mobile device. When the best answer to a query is an app, Google Search will now display the app and make it easy to access or download from Google Play.
Android users can now see apps in search results when searching on their mobile device — and if they’re logged in, they can see links to apps they already have.
“Starting today, Google can save you the digging for information in the dozens of apps you use every day, and get you right where you need to go in those apps with a single search. Google Search can make your life a little easier by fetching the answer you need for you – whether it’s on the web, or buried in an app,” Scott Huffman, VP of engineering, announced on Google’s Inside Search blog.
When the best answer to a query is an app, Google Search will now display the app and make it easy to download or access.
When a user already has the app on their phone, they just need to touch “Open in app” to go to the page in the app relevant to their search.
Searches may include relevant results from the Google Play store, in which case they’ll be grouped together in an apps section. In that case, clicking on the price will take them directly to the download page on Google Play.
The Open in App feature is currently limited to the following apps:
“This is just one step toward bringing apps and the web together, making it even easier to get the right information, regardless of where it’s located,” Huffman wrote.
The ability to find apps in search results is currently available only to English version users of Android 2.3 or higher in the United States.