For a considerable time, Google users have relied on appending their search queries with the term “Reddit” to discover valuable resources related to specific questions.
However, the effectiveness of this strategy took a hit when numerous Reddit forums went offline earlier this month. As a result of a widespread protest against Reddit’s decision to charge developers for data access, moderators of several popular forums made their pages private.
Consequently, many pages within the search results became inaccessible or unhelpful, hampering users’ ability to find the information they sought.
To address this issue, Google has introduced a new feature called Perspectives, which was announced on Monday, aiming to alleviate the problem. The Perspectives tab is now available on mobile web and the Google app in the US, offering users access to discussion forums and videos sourced from popular social media platforms like TikTok, YouTube, Reddit, and Quora.
During an all-hands meeting earlier this month, Prabhakar Raghavan, Google’s Senior Vice President in charge of Search, informed employees that the company was actively working on enhancing search results to provide users with helpful resources without the need to explicitly include “Reddit” in their searches.
Raghavan acknowledged the frustration users had expressed regarding their search experience and assured them that Google was committed to improving it.
Google is actively working on modernizing its search capabilities to remain competitive and leverage the latest advancements in generative artificial intelligence. This entails offering more refined and conversational responses to text-based queries.
During its annual developer conference in May, Google unveiled its ongoing experimentation with a project called Search Generative Experience. While not yet accessible to all users, this initiative aims to provide more comprehensive and insightful results driven by generative AI technology.
Additionally, earlier this year, Google introduced Bard, a competitor to ChatGPT. Bard, however, operates independently from search and is still in the experimental phase.
