Google yesterday announced a new feature to mobile search which is available on all Android phones and the iPhone.
Mobile search is a fast growing market; more and more people now have mobiles with web access and use that to search on the go. It still has a lot of potential and growth to go through, but with the iPhone being more popular than ever and the UK launch of the new Google Nexus One immanent mobile search appears only to be on the up.
With this mind users are now able to have search suggestions given to them based on there last recorded location. To enable this feature, you need to activate “Save recent locations” and “Allow use of device location” on the Google home page on your mobile phone. When this is done you will be able to search on Google and be given various suggestions on search based on your last previous logged location.
Therefore if you are on a business trip in London and begin to type in ‘restaurants in….’ then the search tool would recognize this fact and automatically show your suggestion for ‘restaurants in london’.
I think this is a good tool for users to have when in different locations, while Google Maps can work well for you this will make searching on your mobile a lot more relevant in certain instances and is another way of highlighting differing advantages to mobile search.