Google has taken another small step toward connecting its search engine with world of mobile apps, having just introduced a new feature that lets you search for a band or artist, then tap to immediately start hearing their music in one of your preferred music applications, like Spotify, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, Rdio or Google Play, for example, as well as YouTube.
The feature is being targeted at mobile users, who may be curious about a new artist, or want to hear their favorite band’s latest album.
Today, a good many of those initial searches still take place on Google.com, but apps themselves have likely been siphoning off some of this music-related search traffic by becoming users’ preferred ways to look up, learn about and listen to new music and popular tracks.
With this change, Google has effectively turned its search engine into the entry point for a majority of the top music apps, with plans to add more over time.
This isn’t the first time Google has done something like this. With its mobile “deep linking” agenda, the company is actively working to index the individual pages inside native mobile applications, so users can search on Google.com for information, then be directed to the right place with an app they have installed on their phone, when it offers a relevant result. The company is already working with a good many of the top app makers for things like restaurant searches travel searches, news, social, photos, and more.
In addition, those deep links won’t just be in search results – they’ll be ads, too.
But getting consumers to actually understand that you can use Google.com as an app launcher, so to speak, may take some work.
Over the years, smartphone users have grown accustomed to just tapping the app in question to get going – eschewing Google altogether. So it make sense that Google would launch, and then promote, one of the more appealing use cases that demonstrate how Google search works with mobile applications. And music search is a nice, simple example.
Google says the new music search feature only works on Android in the U.S. for now, but the company is working to bring it to worldwide users, and other local music services, like Deezer.