Gagan Ghotra

Today 3rd October it was Google’s 10th edition of Google For India event.

Meet the speakers who will be joining us at the 10th edition of #GoogleForIndia 🎤

Tune in to the livestream on October 3rd, 11:30 AM as they share our plans for the next chapter of India’s digital journey with ‘AI for India’ 🇮🇳https://t.co/BcOqMVlDEx. pic.twitter.com/wHZH1KhywE

— Google India (@GoogleIndia) October 1, 2024

Google announced a lot of things you can read about those things in the blog posts that they put out and here I have just summarised some of the interesting ones which are related to search engine optimisation (SEO).

Some of the new announced features I guess in the future may go global as well so it might be worth knowing for marketing or SEO professionals based outside of India.

Also FYI I was born in India and I’ve been living in Australia since 2018 so it’s easier for me to understand the language of these events. Below is a recording of the event its language is Hindi but you can use this YouTube captions feature to see English subtitles.

AI Overviews, Video Search and Google Maps

Some Key Points from Google India event – AI Overviews, Video Search and Google Maps …. there was a lot but these are the ones which I found interesting …..

AI Overviews
Google said "And in our testing, we’ve seen that Indian users listen to AI Overviews responses more often… https://t.co/KSa8hR5vQW

— Gagan Ghotra (@gaganghotra_) October 3, 2024

Gemini Powered Summaries of Google Business Profile Reviews

Google in India announced Gemini powered summaries of Google Business Profiles reviews – quick summaries will be helpful for users to make decision if in hurry says Google. pic.twitter.com/lPTq0AVInO

— Gagan Ghotra (@gaganghotra_) October 3, 2024

Image-first results in Google Maps

Google in India announced Image-first results in Maps. Google said 'this helps you ask new kinds of questions and explore like never before'.

Google shared an example query 'cricket themed birthday cakes' and results shows images. Google also said they are using image… pic.twitter.com/a1fsTpc5Dt

— Gagan Ghotra (@gaganghotra_) October 3, 2024

Dining Offers carousel in Google Business Profiles

Google in India announced addition of 'Dining offers' in Google Business Profiles. Google said that as owners you will be able to connect profile with socials then they will pick up your dining offers related posts & display automatically in the profile.

Also Google said that… pic.twitter.com/Al0bGVN63Q

— Gagan Ghotra (@gaganghotra_) October 3, 2024

End

Out of all these I’m specifically excited for Gemini powered summaries of Google Business Profile reviews, I think that it will be super helpful for users because sometimes like when you are trying to figure out if you should be going to a restaurant or a business to get some service and there are like hundreds of reviews then it might be helpful to just see a quick summary and make a judgement about which business to go to.

I hope that Google launches this outside India as well in the future, we just need to wait and see what comes next.