Google to roll out updates and new formats for mobile shopping and travel planning..

                                                    Mobile will play its biggest role ever in 2016 and as Google reveals: mobile travel and shopping searches are already up nearly 30% year-over-year.

                                                    To help with this rise in demand, Google announced yesterday in a blog-post possibly timed to steal some Prime Day thunder, that it will soon begin rolling out new mobile-centric features for PLAs, holiday booking filters, its YouTube’s TrueView shopping feature and a new Showcase Shopping ad format.

Travel planning and booking

                                                    According to Google, visits to mobile travel sites made up 40% of total travel web traffic in the first quarter of this year, while individual travel web sessions are becoming shorter and travel mobile conversion rates have grown 10% as users are increasingly ready to book on mobile.

                                                   To help with planning and booking travel ahead of time, Google has introduced a few new features:

Hotel Smart Filters

                                                   You’ll now be able to filter hotel search results based on rating or price with a single tap. So “pet-friendly hotels in San Francisco under $200” will theoretically find you something relevant.

Hotel Deals

                                                 When searching for a hotel, you may now see a ‘Deal’ label when a hotel’s price is lower than usual. These deals are automatically identified by Google algorithms when it sees a significant reduction in price. In early tests, Google saw that hotels marked with the ‘deal’ label received about twice as many bookings as other hotels.

Hotel Tips

                                                  The ‘Tips’ feature will offer real-time analysis to help users find the best hotels for their needs. Tips may be shown to people when they could save money or find better availability by moving their dates slightly.

Flights price tracking

                                                  Instead of having to continually check prices in Google Flights, users can now opt-in to track ticket-price changes for a specific date and route combination. When prices either increase or decrease significantly, they will be notified by email and Google Now cards.

Showcase Shopping Ads

                                                  This is a new format designed to help shoppers who use broader search terms, such as “women’s athletic clothing” or “living room furniture.”

                                                  Rather than present them with one specific product ad that probably isn’t relevant, Showcase Shopping Ads provides a more in-depth “visually rich experience” showcasing multiple related products.

Currency converter

                                                  Google is currently testing a tool to perform currency conversions in Australia, Switzerland, Canada, and the UK. This feature allows you to convert the currency in your product data locally. So a person shopping in the UK can see products sold by a US retailer, listed in British pounds.