In a never-ending mission to improve their search engine, Google has unveiled several new features. These include a Tab Compare feature, an AI-powered overview of open products across multiple tabs. This means users can search for the best product in a whole new way, ensuring they get the best deal from e-commerce businesses.
Products & Services Online
Google’s new product comparison feature has been a long time coming. The internet has become a part of everyday life, where it’s the biggest marketing tool available to both entrepreneurs and shoppers alike.
Today, the internet is used to find products and even host services that are available to users online. Besides e-commerce, there are also sectors like iGaming that offer access to digital games. It’s also common for those sites to host a live casino online, where table games like blackjack or roulette are played on an interactive stream for viewers. Increasingly, all kinds of experiences are making their way online to make the internet more than just a marketing platform, and instead a hub for entertainment.
As this continues, more products and services will continue to flow through the internet. In keeping up with this trend, Google has implemented several new features intended to make things like reviews even better, like the 2023 review update. Now, Google has given users more power to compare products for themselves across multiple tabs.
The New Tab Compare Feature
Unveiled on the 1st of August, Google implemented three new features called Visual Search, Tab Compare, and Smart History. For desktop users, the Tab Compare feature will have the biggest impact on online shoppers. It has been introduced for US users with a planned widespread rollout later.
Using AI, this feature scrapes information from the tabs you have open. So, if you open several storefront pages, it’ll gather the features, prices, and user star ratings into an easily readable table. It even includes a summary of the product and other helpful information like power output, battery life, and weight of certain products.
This provides a great way to compare products at a glance, using objective information taken from the shop page. While more information is necessary to make a buying decision, it helps users narrow down candidates when looking for products. As AI tools get more refined, the information offered by these features will get even better.
Google’s Other New Features
The other features – Visual Search and Smart History – also use AI to make the Google experience even better. Visual Search brings Google Lens technology to the desktop, after its debut for mobile phones in 2017. It allowed users to scan real-world products using their camera, or circle images on their screen to search for objects featured in them.
Now that feature, specifically the latter, is available for users on desktop. A Google Lens icon has been added to the address bar, so users can click and drag a search window over images. In their example, Google shows a desktop user highlighting, identifying, and searching for a potted plant in a stock image. It’s a great way for users can see something they like, use AI to identify it, and then search for it to buy.
The other added feature, Smart History, helps users to find pages they’ve visited before. Google Chrome’s history page has now adopted AI to make it easier to find searches you’ve executed in the past. Previously, users had to remember keywords and the names of the pages to search for them.
With Smart History, users can ask their history page questions. In their example, Google asks “What was that ice cream shop I looked at last week?” and so the history feature uses AI to answer that question. As Google continues to refine its service, and AI gets even better, we can expect more exciting features in the future.
