The Google App for iOS can automatically convert some website text into links to Google Search results, as announced in a community post that SERoundtable spotted.
Google calls the feature “Page Annotations” and says it “extracts interesting entities from the webpage and highlights them in line,” which can then take you out to Search results when you tap them — inserting links without explicitly asking the user or the site owner first. It seems like a curious move for a company embroiled in antitrust fights over both its search and advertising businesses.
Google has a form for web publishers to opt out of the links. According to the form, “the Page Annotation feature triggered on your site will be disabled within 30 days” of filling it out. Those doing so need to enter all of the variations of their site, including “www and non-www, http and https, and subdomains.”
As 9to5Google points out, this feature is similar to the “ad intents” that Google introduced to its AdSense platform earlier this year, in that it automatically places links that display “relevant, organic search results with ads” on website text. The difference, though, is that site owners have to opt into the ad intents, instead of opting out.
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
