Google speeds up mobile search with expandable site links and experimental ‘Quick view’ badges for Wikipedia

Google on Tuesday announced it has updated its mobile search site with two new features. The first is expandable site links for certain sites in the results page and the second is an experimental “Quick view” feature, starting with Wikipedia articles.

Expandable site links is a feature you should be familiar with if you use the desktop version of Google search on a frequent basis. The company offers the function usually underneath the first result for a main site page link: subsequent links appear for many pages to help you get to a specific section quickly.

Google offers an example for what happens now when you search on your mobile phone for Rotten Tomatoes:

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If you find this feature useful on the desktop, it should be even more so on mobile. Many times it is simply faster to expand the site links and jump to the correct section of the site you want rather than going to the main page and trying to find the right section on your small screen.

As for the new blue “Quick view” badges, Google says these will only appear next to a few results on some searches. In fact, this feature is just an experiment, and the company is understandably starting the test off with Wikipedia articles.

Google’s example in this case is a search for “poker hands”; you can now click the blue badge and see a quick view of the Wikipedia page listing out poker hands. Below, the left-hand side shows the search results page and the right-hand side shows what happens when you tap the blue “Quick view” badge.

Again, quick view is currently limited to Wikipedia pages when you search in English on Google.com. Google says it is working to expand this to additional websites, but wouldn’t detail which ones.

Improvements likes these may seem minor at first, but they do add to the overall experience of a speedy Google search. On mobile, speed is arguably more crucial, though it can sometimes be harder to achieve.

See also – As Web page sizes increased by 56% since last year, Google Analytics data shows mobile access sped up by 30%

Top Image Credit: Johannes Eisele/Getty Images