“Just Google it” has always been indicative of our dependence on search engines, though we never think about how frequently those searches occur. Amit Singhal, senior vice president of Google Search, put things into perspective on Thursday at Re/code‘s Code/Mobile conference when he said Google gets over 100 billion searches a month.
Additionally, more than half of those searches are coming from mobile devices. That doesn’t include devices with screens bigger than 6 inches such as tablets.
With voice recognition and features like Google Now, the search engine box is only just the beginning. Singhal explains that user environments and device capabilities dictate how we search now — from typing in a box the old-school way to talking directly to our phone to retrieve information.
“Search as we think about it is fundamentally how you will interact with computing,” Singhal said. “Computing may live in a 4-to-6-inch device, it may live in a desktop, it may live on a 1-inch round device.”
The company has also indexed over 100 billion links within apps as searchable — a feat considering apps can offer users information without going through search.
As for what happens after you search, Google’s working on that, too.. Just last week the company introduced Accelerated Mobile Pages, which builds web pages efficiently and more simply so news stories load faster.