Snapchat-Like Stories Arrive in Google Mobile Search Results

A popular meme last twelvemonth envisioned Snapchat-like stories invading everything from calculators to pregnancy tests. Perhaps it's time for that meme to make a resurgence, because stories are headed to a new, rather high-profile place: Google's mobile search results.

The web giant'due south new AMP story format, launched Tuesday, "provides content publishers with a mobile-focused format for delivering news and information," Google AMP Production Manager Rudy Galfi wrote in a weblog postal service. Google has teamed with several publishers — including CNN, Conde Nast, Hearst, Mashable, Meredith, Mic, Vox Media, and The Washington Mail — to develop and test this new feature.

To run across the fruits of their labor, head over to thousand.co/ampstories using your mobile spider web browser, and search for one of the publishers mentioned to a higher place. If you search for Mashable, for instance, you lot'll run across a carousel of "visual stories from Mashable.com," including ane offering tips on repurposing an old iPhone and some other explaining the internet's habit to slime.

If you're familiar with Snapchat or Instagram stories, these new ones on Google work pretty much the same way. You'll meet small horizontal lines or dots at the top indicating how many pages are in that story, and can tap on the left side of the screen to become back, or tap on the correct side to get frontwards.

As of today, the new AMP story format is "free and open for anyone to use," Galfi wrote. That means they can be shared and embedded beyond sites and apps. Google put together a tutorial and reference materials for those interested in building AMP stories.

"At a later point, Google plans to bring AMP stories to more products across Google, and expand the ways they appear in Google Search," Galfi wrote. Right at present, AMP stories are limited to mobile search, but Google says they volition eventually work on desktop devices as well.

This new feature comes afterwards Snapchat last month started letting users share certain public stories outside of the app via email, text message, or on a unlike platform such as Facebook or Twitter. By allowing content to be shared outside of its walls, Snapchat is hoping to introduce newbies to the app and abound its user base of operations.

AMP, or Accelerated Mobile Pages, debuted in 2022, and aims to "dramatically improve" webpage load times on smartphones and tablets.

About Angela Moscaritolo

Angela Moscaritolo

Angela Moscaritolo is PCMag's expert on fitness and smart home products. Instruction yoga for nearly 10 years has helped her in evaluating a range of connected health products including fettle trackers, heart rate monitors, rowers, smart scales, stationary bikes, forcefulness preparation machines, treadmills, and more. Angela likewise tests smart dwelling devices from her ranch in Florida, including air purifiers, kitchen appliances, and robot vacuums, just to name a few.