With “Search Plus Your World” turning its search engine into a wonderland for its social product, Google+, the company is now taking advantage of the fact that you may in fact Google yourself too.

During an R&D ego search today, I found that Google is now asking me to complete my profile on Google+:

I was pretty surprised that the request from Google took up so much real-estate in the search results, but I suppose that the company is trying everything to get people to come back and continue to use the product. As you might remember, the company announced that Google+ has 90 million global users, with 60% active engagement. This would appear to be a tactic to increase those engagement numbers.

Along with Google adding “Ask on Google+” links to the bottom of all of its search results, it looks like every facet of its social network will begin creeping up into search, which is of course its biggest product.

The Android team is rolling out a new version of Google+ for the platform, and it includes a few features to keep it in line with its iOS counterpart.

Search is the big feature in Android’s latest version, a glaring hole in the app until now. Search has really opened up Google+, and the content discovery possibilities on the service are vastly more useful and impressive than that of Facebook and Twitter.

The new search button appears on the top of the Home screen:

Here are some other updates in this 2.2 version of Google+ for Android:

- +1 photos
- +1 comments – Just long-press on a comment!
- See if someone’s online and currently typing in Messenger conversations
- Start Messenger conversations by just entering a phone number
- Higher resolution photo uploads
- Links to posts or profiles now open inside of the app
- Several stability improvements and bug fixes

One of the features that users enjoy on the Android version of Google+ is instant upload of photos, as soon as you take them. This feature was available for videos as well, but was a bit more than buggy. That has been fixed in this release. Just remember that if you take ummm, “personal” photos and you have this feature on, they won’t be so personal anymore.

➤ Google+ for Android

There’s a good chance that if you own an iPad, Google is your search engine of choice. The company has made some huge updates to its search interface this year, and has pushed a few more helpful tweaks today.

When you perform a Google search on your iPad, you’re now shown slicker and bigger buttons to change your search preference. Images, Videos, and News are placed prominently, but a tap of the “More” button uncovers similar buttons for Maps, Shopping, Books, Places, Blogs, Flights, Discussions, Recipes, and Patents.

Swiping over the options slide through all of the selections. It’s a way better search experience than the previous display of options only being in the top black bar. On the desktop version of Google search, these options are available on the left hand side. Clearly, Google has made the design fit the iPad’s screen perfectly.

Once you drill into your choice of search, a tool button on the right hand side will let you dig even deeper. When searching for images for example, you can choose to search by size or color. These are all features that Google have offered in its search product for some time, but making them readily available on the iPad is definitely welcomed.

The design is so gorgeous and compact, I’d like to see it adopted on the desktop version. I’m not a fan of toolbars at the top or left-hand side, and would much rather have all options readily available in the context of what I’m actually searching for.

The changes are only viewable on the iPad right now, but I assume that they will be made available for other tablet devices, including those running Google’s own Android operating system.

However, with the iPad accounting for 87.6% of global tablet traffic, maybe Google isn’t in a rush.

In its latest update for its mobile app, Yelp decided to take a swing at Presidential Candidate Rick Perry.

Recently, during a debate, Rick Perry completely forgot what he was talking about and embarrassed himself very publicly. Here’s the video for reference:

In response, check out Yelp’s app update notes from today:

New in 5.4.3
There are three types of bugs that are now gone:
- Bookmarks-related bugs
- iOS5 styling & layout bugs
- And the um… uh, what’s the third one? Let’s see… Bookmarks, iOS layout, and the um… the third one we can’t recall. Oops.

Well played, Yelp.

The most notable updates that come along with this version of Google+ for Android are:

• Completely new app and new visual design
• Battery life improvements
• Navigation and performance improvements
• Significant notifications improvements
• Brand new posting UI
• Add people to a circle from circle profiles

The new design is extremely similar to that of the iOS version of Google+, providing a consistency that the service hasn’t had platform-wide since its launch.

It seems like the company has focused heavily on design the past few months, with Google Reader getting an overhaul today, as well as upcoming changes to Gmail.

Google announced some upcoming upgrades to its Google Reader product today on its blog, here are some details:

In the next week, we’ll be making some highly requested changes to Google Reader. First, we’re going to introduce a brand new design (like many of Google’s other products) that we hope you love. Second, we’re going to bring Reader and Google+ closer together, so you can share the best of your feeds with just the right circles.

As a result of these changes, we also think it’s important to clean things up a bit. Many of Reader’s social features will soon be available via Google+, so in a week’s time we’ll be retiring things like friending, following and shared link blogs inside of Reader.

Using Reader for your RSS feeds has been simple enough, but since Google+ was introduced, there has been a major disconnect between the two products. Luckily, Google hasn’t forgotten about Reader, and is making sweeping changes.

If you prefer to take your feeds elsewhere and aren’t interested in its new upgrade, Google says you can take your feeds with you and points out that “your data belongs to you, after all”.

We think the end result is better than what’s available today, and you can sign up for Google+ right now to start prepping Reader-specific circles. We recognize, however, that some of you may feel like the product is no longer for you. That’s why we will also be extending Reader’s subscription export feature to include the following items. Your data belongs to you, after all, and we want to make sure you can take it with you.

• Your subscriptions
• Your shared items
• Your friends
• Your likes
• Your starred items

Sharing news easily with your circles is what Google+ has been missing, and should be a welcomed with open arms by publishers everywhere. Copying and pasting links into Google+ or even using the +1 button on individual stories has most definitely slowed down the flow of news in streams. This will kick things up quite a bit.

According to Google Operating System, Gmail, Google’s popular email system, is rolling out a facelift for the service.

Google took many years to lift the “beta” tag from Gmail, and has continued to iterate on the product via its “labs” section. Some of us have already been using the preview pane for a while, which will look very familiar to Microsoft Outlook and Apple Mail users.

According to some people who already have access to the new default theme, text labels have been replaced with an action bar of icons, new interface for conversations, a better layout for all browsers in any size, and updated search box with advanced options.

Android 4.0 users will definitely recognize this new interface.

Some screenshots below show the simplifying of Gmail, which I’ve personally been using since it has launched.

The company has appeared to have posted a video about the new Gmail look on YouTube, but it is currently marked as private:

Google continues to slowly and methodically rollout changes to its products, rather than rush them. Vic Gundotra spoke yesterday about not wanting to rush Google+’s API’s, and would rather make sure the system is solid before bringing in third-party developers.

UPDATE: An awesome reader of ours, Michel, saved the video before it was gone and put it up on Vimeo.

Catch today’s latest Google news at TNW Google.