Google’s ‘Near Me Now’ Search Debuts

New Updates

Ping Integrates with Twitter

Ping, the social network owned by Apple for music recently revealed a cross-platform integration with Twitter. Ping users can now directly connect their Twitter accounts to Ping, find other twitter users who are also on the Ping network and share their Ping activity, song previews and purchase links.... More »

Business Appmatcher Launched by Rackspace

A matchmaking engine for your business? That's what Rackspace is hoping to bring you. Appmatcher helps businesses locate apps that can assist them in their duties. Businesses can use AppMatcher to find apps for everything from human resources to project management to accounting. The engine intends t.... More »

Google Updates Its SEO Starter Guide

Google first published its 22-page PDF guide to SEO a few years ago. This guide served as a navigation tool for understanding how to maximize SEO benefits. Users will be happy to hear that the company just released an updated version of this guide. Now with 32-pages, the new guide to SEO provid.... More »

Google Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics Integrated

Google Webmaster Tools has made a recent change to its verification page by adding a link that connects verified webmaster to their active Google Analytics accounts. This is not the same as site verification using Google account. It is now possible to link both Tools and gain access to the Goog.... More »

"Click to Call" Ads from Google Draw the Attention of Numerous Advertisers

At the beginning of the year, Google made an announcement and introduction of a special service identified as "Click to Call". This service is intended to advertisers that placed their ads on mobile phones - specifically, the "high-end" phones that are identified as "smartphones". Basically, these c.... More »

Starting today, you can search by using your location as the query. Just go to Google.com on your iPhone or Android browser and click on “Near me now” once your location has been provided by your phone.

“Near me now” was designed to address two user problems. First, Google wanted to make it fast and easy to find out more about a place in your immediate vicinity, whether you’re standing right in front of a business or if it’s just a short walk away. For example, you may want to know what other customers think about a restaurant before you go inside (see quick video below) or what they have been raving about on the menu before you order. By selecting the “Explore right here” option, you can find out more about a place “right here” with just a few clicks.

Second, Google wanted to make searching for popular categories of nearby places really simple. Imagine that you emerge from the subway station and you want to grab a coffee, but you don’t see a coffee shop around you. You can simply search for all nearby coffee shops by using “Near me now”. To search other categories of places not shown, “Browse more categories” provides access to their local search product with more category choices.

“Near me now” is currently available in the US for iPhone (OS 3.x) or Android-powered devices with version 2.0.1 or later. You must first enable location in order for “Near me now” to appear, and “Explore right here” works only if the phone provides location accuracy within approximately a city block.

John Eric Hoffman and Jussi Myllymaki, Google Mobile Engineering