Google’s mobile search site for iPhone and Android devices has had a little upgrade to help you find what business you’re looking for just a bit faster. After doing a search, you can pare down results based on what’s open, how close locations are, and how highly rated they are. Entries still pull in all of the rich info from Places, like maps with directions, phone numbers with direct links to call, and pictures if there are any available.
Google’s been on something of a rampage over the last year fleshing out their mobile search site on iPhone and Android. They’ve added a toggled sidebar, search history, product search, sorting options, query prediction, app search, and lots more. All of this work specifically for their mobile site is in line with Google’s strategy of keeping everything in a browser, and not necessarily appifying every given task.
While I tend to lean in favour of dedicated apps that can tie in more closely with the native operating system (whatever it happens to be), it can be surprising just how far you can get on the browser alone. One web app that I see as a shining example of this is the Untappd social network for beer; they’ve got a polished, mobile-optimized, touch-friendly, location-aware app that is entirely web-based. It has little need to launch a dedicated app at this point, and I’d be curious to see how many other app devs could pull off the same thing.
Head on over to google.com in your mobile browser to check out the new business search filtering options.