Google Launches Touch To Search On Android Devices, Similar To Now On Tap

Android Central reports some Android users are seeing a new feature within their mobile devices that enable the user to tap on a phrase, which then brings up a Google search response based on the word/phrase they selected.

If you download the latest version of Chrome to your Android device it may enable this feature. In addition, switching your default search engine on Android to Bing disables this feature from working.

One of the users who spotted this is named Bryant Blake who shared a picture of how to enable the feature:

Once enabled, you can then initiate the feature and it will show search results and sometimes Google Answer results based on the phrase you tapped on.

Here is a screen shot from Glenn Gabe on Twitter of how it looks like on his Galaxy 4.

At Google I/O, Google introduced Now on Tap, a way to search natively within Android, but the results lead to both quick answers and native Android apps participating in App Indexing.

We have asked Google for more details on this and will update this story when we hear back.

Below are some additional screen shots from an Android device we have here:

About The Author

Barry Schwartz

Barry Schwartz a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry's personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here.