Google’s mobile search will now reflect public information from Facebook

Google is trying to make sure its search engine remains useful on smartphones. Earlier this year, when Google announced on its earnings call that Etsy was seeing more traffic because of deep links in mobile search, stock of the arts-n-craft site exploded.

Of course, it’s important to note that Google won’t be able to access any private information for displaying in search results, only public information.

Incidentally, if you ask it for the USA population was when Star Wars was released, it’ll give you the population for 1999.

According to Google, “We can now break down a query to understand the semantics of each piece so we can get at the intent behind the entire question”. The new natural language search methodology looks to understand the context of complex questions and provide answers. For example, Google says you can search for “What songs did Taylor Swift record in 2014” and get a list of songs… and that’s true.

Asking Google for the Royals roster in 2013 will bring back a result page with the team members in 2013, not the current roster. That content – posts and photos that users see while they are logged in – still won’t be searchable through Google search, mobile or otherwise.

For instance, the question “Who was the U.S. President when the Angles won the World Series”, is processed on multiple levels.

Finally, the app is beginning its journey towards understanding even more complex questions, such as “What was the US population when Bernie Sanders was born?” or “What are a few of Seth Gabel’s father-in-law’s movies?” It’s always interesting to read what Google has to say about these things.

First off, the search engine will understand and handle superlatives from search queries.