Billions of people use Google every day to get answers to their questions or to simply search for something. Google knows its impact on the world and continues to introduce new and unique features to its search engine to make it a user-friendly platform. 

Google has recently introduced two new features which will help people search things as well as keep them updated about things they find interesting. 

Feature #1: Google Product Reviews ✍

The changes that have been made to the Google Product review is the first update as it shows the product review feature in Google has become bigger than it was before. A Twitter user, SaadAK, took a screenshot of the product reviews. It shows the new product boxes that were introduced as part of this update. The Google products are now displayed in tile-like designs on the search and each time is affiliated with a different website that sells the same product. 

Another Twitter User, Glenn Gabe, commented by saying Google normally tests for queries yielding product review content in three different styles:

1. Large cards on mobile for affiliate review content 
2. Large image thumbnails leading to Google Images for affiliate content
3. Super-large images in the SERP 

While it can be assumed that these product reviews directly impact ecommerce websites, this is not the case but instead it impacts content sites that do product review write ups. The reason for this is because ecommerce sites do not do product reviews writing at such a large scale. 

Currently, Google is testing which style would best be suited for product reviews on search, so let us wait to see what stays and what doesn’t.

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Feature #2: The Bell Icon ????

This feature may have been seen for some time now, it is the bell icon which is displayed on the image carousel box. 

In the image below, it can be seen that when you search for something on Google Images there will be a bell icon and while scrolling if you tap on this icon it will notify Google that you are interested in this content. The result of this is that the search engine pushes out more content of that nature via Google Discover and possibly Google Alerts.  

While this bell icon may seem strange on the image search at first, Google must have thought it through when launching the feature and should have a mighty good explanation for the introduction of this feature. 

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Why should you care?

The two new features introduced by the tech giant may not seem like much if you are not a business selling physical products, however, these features will result in many new features coming to fruition. In addition to new features, Google is preparing for a page experience update, so all these new features can also be in preparation for the update. However, this update has been delayed so we can assume Google will continue introducing new features ahead of the new rollout. Read this post on the updated page experience rollout to know when to expect the changes.