Google’s New Ecosystem

Google announced a series of significant changes to its Assistant. Most of the news so far has revolved around several features being discontinued, such as sending an email with your voice.

Bluntly put, “the microphone icon will now trigger Search Results” within the Google app. In addition, the microphone in the Pixel search bar will now trigger Voice Search instead of the Assistant.

Voice search is now much more important. Since I’ve been using the Assistant, now with search results, most of my searches have been by voice.

I discovered search in the Assistant one day before Google announced its launch. Since I’m excited about the day Bard will be in the Assistant, I keep testing it on my Pixel 2 watch. I was cooking soup and created my own recipe, but I didn’t know how long red lentils needed to cook. Normally, I’d go to the pantry, take out the package, and search the small print for how long they should cook. Instead, I spoke to my watch: “how long do red lentils cook?” And it told me.

What is the difference between Google Search and Google Assistant?

Search and Assistant offer the user different experiences. Assistant finds information it thinks will be useful to you. Sometimes, that information includes websites. I’ve seen it show an accordion, similar to a “People also ask” result. Inside this accordion are websites that may be useful to searchers. I’ll study these more closely!

If you have an Android phone, Assistant comes preinstalled. You access it by holding down the home button. However, on my phone, I had to enable this setting to use the power button as an Assistant launcher.

If you have an iPhone, you can use Assistant through the Assistant app. Here’s more in an Apple Insider article called Google hints at Assistant with Bard for iOS and Android.

So far, in my brief testing, it seems that accessing the web through Google Assistant is a completely different experience than traditional search.

If I type meditation into Assistant, I simply get a definition, along with an option to search. If I tap that button, I can see the traditional search results.

When I searched “what are the recent changes to Google Assistant,” Search Engine Land appeared first, and the regular search results followed. In Assistant, the Search Engine Land post was the only result I was given. My Google Assistant spoke: “According to Search Engine Land…” and read the featured snippet.

I could then continue the conversation with more questions or interact with Search Engine Land to read more. Search is a library. Assistant is your librarian. Bard and I had a conversation about the difference between Search and Search within Assistant.

Assistant is… well, your assistant. Which now uses Search.

Assistant shows accordions containing useful content. Assistant doesn’t always return traditional search results.

I asked my Assistant, “what kind of breathing should I do to meditate,” and it gave me a carousel of topics I might want to learn more about. Opening these carousels revealed pages with content that, to me, is exactly the kind of content that aligns with Google’s helpful content guidance that I’ve preached for years.

Now, let’s take a quick look. For this query I saw content from:

Healthline – The topic is answered very clearly and concisely on the page. Healthline is known for having reliable and useful medical information.

Othership – This site has a complete guide about something called nitric oxide breathing. It tells me a lot not only about alternate nostril breathing, but also about alternatives.

I had trouble finding this website’s home page, since there’s no distinctive link or logo. It would give SEOs chills! But when I found it, I discovered that this business is a brand with a breathwork app that has tens of thousands of users. Remember when Google gave quality raters more guidance on how to evaluate experience.

Verywell Mind – Another brand recognized for writing about health, this site gives me very detailed directions on how to perform this breathing technique.

Better Sleep. Again, a brand with a sleep app and many users. This content adds information about the science behind this breathing technique. Each of the sites in this carousel had content that was uniquely useful to someone performing this query. And each of them was well known when it comes to talking about this topic.

Commercial searches in Assistant. I expect many commercial searches to start as conversations.

I searched “What do I need to know about planting seedlings indoors during winter in Barcelona” and Assistant gave me a result. This comes from a company that sells seeds in Barcelona. Then I asked, “Where is a good place near me to buy this equipment?”

Assistant showed me a maps result. In this case, the order of the recommended businesses was the same as if I had done a regular search (third image). The difference here is that the regular search has organic results below. The Assistant result (middle) only gives me the maps pack.

Bard is coming to Assistant soon. Very soon, we should see Assistant receive another update.

I think many will use the Assistant. If I’m right, this has the potential to radically change the search ecosystem.

Get ready!