If you are using an Android phone, you will now see apps from Google Play in the search results when there are apps that match the keywords searched for.

Here is the image Google provided that shows the apps in search results.

These app results can definitely be intrusive.  In the screen shot included in the Google announcement, it shows that the apps are available as side swiping, and they take up quite a bit less screen space than what we are actually seeing in the wild (screenshots from a Galaxy S4).

When they have three results in a row like this screenshot, they can come across as a bit obnoxious, especially since showing three apps takes up almost an entire screen.  Hopefully this will change over time so all Android devices will see it as a side swipe version, as shown in the image Google shared.

The app results don’t appear to be sponsored in any way, so it is more a perk for those apps in Google Play.  It does make you wonder if Apple – or their App developers – would be interested in doing something similar for iOS users, although you’d have to expect that Google would charge for that.

Here is another example of app in search, again showing up with 3 stacked.

Those who are wanting their apps to show up will need to have app indexing set up for their app.

Starting this week, people searching on Google can also discover your app if they haven’t installed it yet. If you’ve implemented App Indexing, when indexed content from your app is relevant to a search done on Google on Android devices, people may start to see app install buttons for your app in search results. Tapping these buttons will take them to the Google Play store where they can install your app, then continue straight on to the right content within it.

Google has a developer’s guide available with details on setting it up.

It isn’t clear how they are ranked, as it doesn’t seem to follow either number of installs or the rating alone.

It will be interesting to watch as we hear from developers and whether this change brings increased installs.  And people could certainly use it as a way to quickly search a Google Play store for an app without leaving Google Search itself.

Thank you to Kristine Schachinger for the screenshots.