Google crawls 30 billion in-app information and recommends apps when searching for content

Google has just launched a new mobile search feature for the Android platform that can show mobile app installation ads to users when they search for content.

This is equivalent to turning Google's mobile search page into an app discovery service, which may be a great boon for mobile developers.

As the computing industry has shifted from desktop to mobile, high-quality content is often displayed through applications, which reduces the usefulness of search engines. To address this problem, Google launched the App Index in 2013, which allows it to crawl the content of some applications and display links in search pages.

However, in the initial version, users must first install the relevant application to view the content through the link. Earlier this year, relevant content began to be displayed through Google Now Cards. Google will open this project to all developers in the future.

The latest upgrade to mobile search further strengthens the concept of app indexing, helping users find relevant content through apps that they have not yet installed.

The App Indexing program now has more than 30 billion deep links — the first time Google has released that data, but the company has not yet disclosed exactly how many developers have deployed the program.

The general pattern of the project is: if you search for recipes on your Android phone, and the Google algorithm thinks that an app can provide this information, you will see the relevant app in the search results, with a prominent "Install" button next to it. Just click the button and you will be redirected to the Google Play Store to install the app. After the app is installed, just click the "Continue" button, and the app will open and show you the information you just searched for.

This move is crucial for mobile app developers. After all, app discovery is still an unsolved problem, and as long as the installation button and related apps can be displayed to more people, it will bring good news to app developers.

"The goal of this project is to make it easier for developers to continue to create high-quality content within their apps and provide users with direct access to that content through deep links," said Rajan Patel, a Google engineer who is leading the project.

Patel also said the team is looking for ways to scale beyond just Android, but he wouldn't reveal details at this time.