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Google updates search to lock you into an endless search loop

Google updates search to lock you into an endless search loop

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Image: Google

Google has updated search in three ways over the past few weeks, and today, the company explained how these new features encourage users to fall further down a search hole. All three updates let users expand their search beyond the information they originally intended to find.

"Knowledge panels" now show related content, so if you search for skiing, you'll also be able to jump to a search about other snow-related sports, like snowboarding, or a more focused skiing search, like "ski jumping." You can see an example here:

Image: Google

Meanwhile, "featured snippets," which already give users a snapshot of whatever they're searching, will include more images along with related searches. These are algorithmically determined, Google says.

These are the new featured snippets:

Image: Google

Finally, Google is proving additional search suggestions, similar to knowledge panels, but it seems Google will automatically deduce the topic you're researching based off back-to-back searches. So if you look up two individual soccer players, you'll then see other related athletes.

I can't wait for us all to fall so deep down a Google search hole that we forgot what we initially wanted to look up.