Led a cross-disciplinary team to help people find the businesses and services they need on Google Search

Key challenges

Identify opportunities to improve where and how people search for all things local (100’s of millions of search queries a day), from improving categorical search experiences to help people find exactly what they want, to connecting with younger audiences through visual search leveraging user-generated content like photos and video.

Focus on new services during Covid-19, helping people understand how businesses and their neighborhoods are changing as people tried to make sense of the world post March 2020.

User archetypes

One of the early challenges was to get a more nuanced understanding of who uses Google for local searches. While billions of people use Google for searching every day, our research uncovered insights about different motivations — from getting things done right now to planning something for later or even collecting ideas for inspiration for a big event, like a special date night or even planning a wedding.

Modernizing Local Search

Many of the surfaces people know and love work well, but they haven’t been changed in literally decades. Some of our early wins were cleaning up the UI to reduce friction and cognitive load, and make searching feel easier and more visual. Below, a visual clean up of the canonical “3 pack”, new cuisine pickers for Covid-19 delivery, and visual filters to help people drill down on the right parameters for a search without having to rely on typing a new query.

Visual Search

With Gen Z’s expectations for visuals to explore and discover new places and things, I organized a sprint across 11 teams at Google to define a vision for Visual Search. Many of these updates can be seen live in Google Searches today and demonstrated an increase in engagement particularly for verticals where seeing is better than reading (food, beauty services, attractions).

Results

Moving metrics in Search is extremely difficult, as the search results page is a delicately balanced ecosystem of many user needs and journeys. This work was well-received by users, as demonstrated by an uptick in engagement on local results and whole page engagement. We learned that visuals are in fact a great way to inspire people to find great places — whether local services, restaurants, or shopping — our team launched over a dozen changes and major new surfaces that are a critical part of the Search experience today.