Posted by: Kerry Houchin, Project Manager

With the release of Google’s Nexus One smart phone, Google has spent some serious time creating innovative mobile search applications. Now on-the-go Android users can search for businesses using the “What’s Nearby” feature and can search for information on landmarks, artwork and other objects using the Google Goggles app.

Here’s how they work:
• What’s Nearby uses the smart phone’s location feature to build a list of the 10 closest places including restaurants, businesses and locations of interest. Since listings are pulled from the Google Local Business Center listings, this reinforces the fact that having a presence in the Local Business Center is becoming more and more important.
• Google Goggles puts the smart phone camera to work searching for objects using photos instead of words. At this point, while Google Goggles is still in its infancy, Google recommends using it to search for text-rich objects such as books, DVDs, logos and barcodes, and notes that Goggles is not yet effective in searches for objects such as food, animals or plants. As Goggles grows more and more reliable in search accuracy, it will be important to ensure your products, barcodes and logos are included in search results. While there is no set process at this point to get included in Google Goggles, it might not hurt to submit your pictures to the search engine to get Goggles started on indexing images of your brand.

To learn more about Google mobile search and stay on top of the latest news, check out the Google Mobile Blog.