As Google morphs SERP design from desktop to mobile, it appears that it has decided that reading words is perhaps too much to ask of our educationally-challenged fellow users. And so it is now testing icons in the mobile results as shown below:

Google Local Icons

I guess it’s easier to click on a cute picture than try to read text while you’re driving right?

Rivers Pearce of Boomtown ROI just sent me this screenshot. It’s from results from the iOS Google Search App. The “Send to Mobile Phone” and “Driving Directions” icons appear next to a personalized result (but they are not clickable so WTF?). Angela Tice of Boomtown is in River’s G+ circle and had posted a link to LiveLoveMaryland.com on G+, so the icons may be triggered by the G+ connection and/or the implementation of Schema.org markup and/or Live Love Maryland’s Google My Business Page.

We are also seeing open house times and location snippets appear with real estate aggregator results in the SERPs. I have not seen that one before:

Real Estate Snippets

It’s getting interesting out there folks…

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4 Response Comments

  • Matt  August 12, 2014 at 9:53 am

    Hey Andrew, interesting find. More so with the icons. I think the open house listings are just traditional Event itemtype from schema.org. The code doesn’t back that up, but Google knows…hah.

  • Phil Rozek  August 12, 2014 at 1:46 pm

    Interesting, especially given that real estate agents mostly disappeared from the Places results. I wonder if this is the other shoe (with Pigeon poo).

  • Andrew Shotland  August 12, 2014 at 2:55 pm

    I think we are entering a phase of rapid experimentation with the local SERPS. Wouldn’t be surprised if the next few months unearth a lot of different UIs

  • DARING FORCE  August 13, 2014 at 11:30 pm

    It would be nice if the phone number in our home page’s description tag turned into a cute phone icon, rather, it disappeared from the SERPS altogether. Strange? Yes, indeed. More to be revealed.