Filed under: iPhone, iPod touch
Mobile Safari search via toolbar points to clearer results
Google quietly fixed a problem yesterday that bugged at least a few iPhone users -- the results page it returned when searching through the toolbar in Mobile Safari.
In a pre-Tuesday world, Google would return its standard, not-iPhone-formatted results page. Why? I honestly don't know, but personally didn't question it too deeply. It was what it was. I'd do my search, zoom into my result, and be on my way.
That was so 2008.
Now searches through the toolbar return nicely-formatted-for-iPhone results. Just as it should be.
Thanks to DJT for sending this in.
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Hotrod said 10:09AM on 12-17-2008
Life just got a little bit easier.
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Mehul said 11:51AM on 12-17-2008
Actually not. One major flaw with this is that if you have a long set of keywords going out of the little test box, its REALLY hard to change whatever is outside the visible box
For example, if you're searching for TUAW and you accidently typed
'The unofficial apple welog', its really difficult to go that last word. Sure you can have google give you suggestions but what if they're not what you're looking for?
Hawkman said 10:27AM on 12-17-2008
Not sure why they don't take you to their web app, though, with that blue tab bar across the top.
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Andy said 1:09PM on 12-17-2008
Looks like the screenshot was taken just before the address bar auto hides. On mine it looked the same for a moment then hid so I could see the blue tab bar.
Hawkman said 7:16PM on 12-17-2008
Ah, cool. In my defence, I'm a UK user and this hasn't rolled out to google.co.uk - through which I'm redirected - yet. :-)
Greenscreen said 10:27AM on 12-17-2008
I don't have an iPhone, but what do you mean by "via toolbar"? Are you talking about typing into the google search window and hitting enter?
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Andy said 1:06PM on 12-17-2008
The oval "google" field in the top right was a new addition to mobile safari in the last iPhone OS update which can be refered to as the google toolbar. It's always been a feature we could add to our computers browsers but not safari mobile.
Matt Radford said 11:19AM on 12-17-2008
This only seems to be the case on google.com - when you search on google.co.uk using MobileSafari, it still returns the desktop version of Google search.
Matt
www.allaboutiphone.net
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swissfreek said 5:47AM on 12-18-2008
Such a simple change that makes a pretty decent usability improvement that you would have thought it would have been done forever ago. Huzzah!
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Dan Craig said 10:41AM on 12-17-2008
Errr.. not so much.
Still getting the 'grown-up' version of the page (iPhone 3g / UK / 2.2)
Have had sporadic glimpses of the highly-superior iPhone-formatted version, but no way of maintaining it...
Any tips?
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joelisfar said 10:50AM on 12-17-2008
Try deleting your cookies and cache from the Safari settings. And maybe after you do that quit Safari.app by holding down the home button for like seven seconds when you're in Safari.
http://support.apple.com/kb/TA38613?viewlocale=en_US
JF said 11:38AM on 12-17-2008
Dan Craig - bookmark www.google.com or www.google.co.uk and search from there to get the iPhone formatted page, alternatively install the Google App.
Searching from the toolbar doesn't bring up the iPhone formatted page for me either from the UK to www.google.co.uk
Greencar said 10:45AM on 12-17-2008
Not working with localized (at least French) versions yet...
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joelisfar said 10:48AM on 12-17-2008
That had always really irked me! I'm so glad they fixed it,thanks for the headsup.
Also, it seems like they fixed it in the google mobile app too ? I don't remember exactly how it was but I think it used to be the web version instead of the iPhone version.
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David Hughes said 12:09PM on 12-17-2008
Not seeing that view here in the UK.
How tediously US-centric for Google to roll it out onto .com only.
It wouldn't be so bad if they didn't FORCE me onto .co.uk
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antiorario said 12:33PM on 12-17-2008
Same for google.it. I really can't believe they have separate style sheets for each domain.
Jason said 10:55AM on 12-17-2008
I think this is US-only to start (it was pre-announced in November I believe). Sadly I'm still getting teeny-tiny results in Canada.
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Varun said 10:55AM on 12-17-2008
Crap. I actually used it the other way around - I really disliked the iPhone optimized page.
Is there any way to go back?
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heytpn said 4:32PM on 12-17-2008
I hate this too, so what I did is I went to google.com/imghp, then searched for a random image. At the top now, you'll see either "Search Images" or "Search the Web". Type in whatever, then hit "Search the Web". Then it'll be the standard results. I bookmarked the results page... that's as close as I got.
Tom said 11:01AM on 12-17-2008
Yep, seems to be US-only, at least for now. Still getting the usual Google result page here in Germany. Dan, or anybody else where this is working, would you be so kind to post the complete Google URL you have on the result page? On my iPhone there's a "client=safari" in the URL. Perhaps you have something like "client=iphone" to get the iPhone-formatted result page?
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