What you need to know
- During its "Search On 2022" event, Google revealed new ways to make it easier to find something to eat.
- This includes finding specific dishes to make, along with finding the right restaurant for everyone.
- Along with the multisearch feature, you'll be able to use a screenshot to identify food from an image and find the closest location that has it.
Ahead of next week's hardware event, Google's annual 'Search On' presentation just wrapped up, giving us a look at what's to come to Google Search. In addition to sharing some of the machine learning improvements being made to Lens, the company is also aiming to provide a better experience for the "foodies" out there.
Earlier this year, Google shared its new multisearch capability, which allows users to snap a picture or take a screenshot, paste the image in the Google app, and then search for additional terms relating to the image.
Multisearch is being expanded to include different foods, allowing you to "search a screenshot of the post to identify that it’s a kouign amann, a French pastry made with layers of butter and dough." Then, you'll be able to enter extra search terms such as "near me" to find the closest bakery that carries the pastry you're looking for.
When it comes to organizing and finding a restaurant that can meet the requests of your dinner party, Google's ratings and review system go a long way. But just because a restaurant has a 4.5-star review doesn't necessarily mean that it's the right "atmosphere" for you.
Google is also planning to make it possible for users to "preview and evaluate restaurants to better understand what makes them special." This is being done using machine learning to "analyze images and reviews from people" so that you can make a proper and well-informed decision ahead of time.
Something else that plays a role in the decision-making process for picking a restaurant is the menu itself. Many restaurants already have a digital version of their menu available, but some of them don't really offer as much information about the dishes themselves. Google's new "Multitask Unified Model" will aim to provide accurate menus, complete with image previews, while also highlighting "most popular dishes" along with being able to "call out different dietary options."
As is the case with many of the changes to Google Search, these changes won't be arriving all at once. Instead, the company simply provided a preview of what's to come, with many of the updates expected to begin arriving over the coming months.
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