Google has come up with an interesting new feature to give an even better user experience for music fans searching for their favourite band online.Launching first on the English language version of Google.com, the function brings up any live music events in the search results page once you’ve searched for the name of an artist or band.
“Now when you search for bands or artists, you may see upcoming concert tour dates right on the results page if they’re playing in your area,” Google wrote in a blog post.
It will use your GPS location to bring up the most accurate results, in the same way that the weather or nearby restaurants appear in Google’s search pages.
Explaining more of the function, Google wrote: “If [the artist/band] aren’t touring near you, the new results for concerts won’t appear, but if the band happens to be coming to your town within the next few months, you can see the concert dates listed under the band’s official website.
“You can then click on the band’s official site to learn more or click on other web pages to learn more about the event or to buy tickets.”
It does this by aggregating data for live gigs from more than one website and display it under the band’s official website, including links to sites such as ticketmaster.
And if the function is popular with users, Google will expand the service to countries around the world in the future.
Already, the search engine and technology giant brings up songs by popular artists that can be played instantly from Google’s pages.
For example, when searching for Alicia Keys, her latest songs are listed below the links for the singer’s MySpace and Last FM pages without having to click through to those sites.
Two of her most-popular music videos are listed under MTV’s web link and her most-viewed VEVO YouTube videos appear, all in Google’s first page of results.