Google has gone ahead and highlighted as many as 50 changes it brought about in March to enhance the search experience. For regular users, the list put up on the official Google Inside Search blog does not bring along any breaking news. But those into SEO may probably be looking forward to what the Mountain View crew has put across.
Out of the many changes mentioned, there were certain tweaks and alterations that particularly grabbed the attention. To begin with, symbols that were not taken into account in queries, will now be considered and these include %, $, \, ., @, #, and +. Changing passwords will result in logging users off their accounts, Search and everything ‘Google.’
Many will also notice the improvements made to the UI for News Universal results. Other noteworthy changes spell out to be improved relevant image search results as well as better application ranking with an enhanced UI for users employing mobile devices. The search engine will aim to fish out fresh videos over stale ones. Apart from videos, image search has also been pushed up by a notch to return more pertinent results.
Name detection of celebrities and other popular figures has also received a facelift. Additionally, language detection in auto-complete has undergone tweaks to proffer a revamped experience to users. The UI of local results is optimized for tablets such that they are more convenient to scan. Most importantly for Google, the +1 button feature in search has been rolled out to more countries and domains.
The Google search changes have been made applicable since the beginning of March this year.