With the stated goal of helping you find the right place when you need to find it most, Google is enhancing its local mobile search services with a the new “open now” feature.
Heralding the development on the Official Google Mobile Blog, software engineers Yoshi Matsumoto and Keiji Maekawa say the new filter is directing users precisely to where they want – or need – to be.
In the US, we launched an “open now” feature which lets you filter local search results to show only businesses that are open right now, based on their listed hours. When you’re hankering for pizza at 1 o’clock in the morning, this can be really handy.
Another sophisticated filter tweak helps users find restaurants and retailers by user star ratings and, naturally, also by distance from one’s present location.
According to the official announcement of the local search features refresh, there’s also the addition of images, reviews from around the web and bigger buttons for viewing a map or calling a business directly (the business’s open hours are now shown within the results)
To learn more about recent improvements in local mobile search, check out the official Google Mobile blog.
