Stars in mobile search

Wednesday, March 31, 2010 | 4:51 PM

Earlier this month on the Official Google Blog, we announced how stars make search more personal by allowing you to mark and rediscover your favorite content. Today, we are extending this feature so that you can get to your favorite content on your phone, anytime, anywhere. For example, if you previously searched for "car reviews" and starred a few sites that were useful while researching cars on your computer, searching for "car reviews" on your phone will allow you to rediscover your starred items. If there are additional results that you want to star while on mobile, simply click the star marker beside the result, and you will be able to see it later when searching from your computer or phone.

To try this yourself, go to google.com on your phone's browser, sign in to your Google Account and do a search. Star a few results and then do the search again to see your starred items appear at the top of your results. To see the same starred items between computer and phone, make sure you are signed in to the same account. The stars in search functionality is currently supported on Android phones, iPhones/iPods, and Palm WebOS devices in the US.

7 comments:

Rambling in Florida said...

What I would love to see is the exact opposite: the ability to flag results that I *never* want to see again. There are so many sites that are nothing but aggregated content or re-search pages that they represent significant clutter in search results. Allow me to flag a result as blacklisted. Allow me to share my blacklist with others in a pool. And ultimately, use the blacklist weight as a factor in presenting the results list for everyone. This capability will go a long way to eliminating those sites that offer little or nothing and exist simply to run ads and collect revenue. That's my rant for the day!

John Navas said...

This comment has been removed by the author.

John Navas said...

This is a great idea, in part because these starred items get added to your Google Bookmarks automatically. But what's sorely missing and badly needed is a good way to access your Google Bookmarks on your mobile/Android device, ideally an Android app, but at least a mobile web version of Google Bookmarks. Thanks.

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Unknown said...

This does not seem to be working on my HTC Desire. I am logged into my google account but I don't get the option to star items. It works in Chrome on my desktop ok.
Is there a help page for this new feature?

John Navas said...

On your HTC Desire:
1. Launch your browser.
2. Do a Web search.
When the results come up, you should see faint stars at the right edge horizontally aligned with each result.
Press a faint star to toggle it on.
Perhaps your stars are so faint you can't easily see them.
Hope that helps,
John

Unknown said...

Thanks John I've tried that but there are definitely no stars. When I do a search is defaults to google.co.uk instead of .com but using .co.uk on the PC works ok so I don't think its that.

I guess I'll have to have a search around and see if anyone else has the same problem. Thanks for your help.