This blog was written by Jeremy Conkin.
Mobile is making a shift in focus towards context. Our mobile devices know so much about us, and they are beginning to learn from this data. Google's Now on Tap and Apple's investment in the Apple Watch demonstrate how these companies are making their devices more personal.
At WWDC 2015, the iOS 9 search functions were announced. These toolsets represent a large leap in making user-relevant information accessible quickly. Apps are no longer as relevant as information, furthering this advance of more personal content.
What is iOS Search
Spotlight on iOS started as a way to quickly find apps. As the number of apps on devices continued to grow, users were getting discouraged from adding new ones. They were hunting through screens and folders for the ones they already had. Spotlight made all installed apps quickly accessible.
Then Apple expanded Spotlight to search web, contacts, messages, appointments, and more. Search is another evolution of Spotlight that can link to content within applications, content hosted on mobile and the web, and even content private to the user. Search aims to be more personal and relevant than traditional web searches on an iOS device.
Types of Search Content
Spotlight can search app content, private content, and web content that is also in apps. As each one of these item categories lives in its own ecosystem, the process for making them all searchable differs.
App Activity
Before iOS 9, Spotlight app searches were mostly reserved to searching for the apps themselves. Apps that were relevant to a search were made available in a list. With iOS 9, specific pages and content within an application are made available within search. Selecting the app from search results opens it to the very page that is relevant! Imagine searching for a restaurant and receiving an OpenTable link to my reservation within my search results.
For programmers, the key to implementing this functionality is NSUserActivity. iOS 8 and OSX Yosemite developers will remember this class as a way for apps to maintain state across multiple devices. Because NSUserActivity is a snapshot of an app's state, it's perfect for deep-linking to a certain place with an app.
NSUserActivities may be designated as publicly or privately searchable. As public content receives a lot of traffic, it's "cloud index" value on Apple's servers grows, and it starts to appear in more search results. App activity search even integrates with Safari and Siri!
App Content
App content typically refers to user-generated content, such as photos or documents. CoreSpotlight is a new iOS 9 framework that allows content to be deep-linked from search results. Looking for that photo taken during the family vacation to Hawaii? How about that presentation on emerging tech trends? These things can now be found via Spotlight.
Web Markup
Web markup allows users to view Facebook links, Twitter cards, and all sorts of web content without leaving search. Users can then select an item from search results to get more detail.
Web markup is a great tool if you plan to host the same content on both web and in an app. Developers need to take care to setup mobile deep links for Apple to index their content. The links exist on the web, and they direct the user to specific places within an app using reverse URL lookup.
Applebot is a web crawler that has been indexing for some time. It looks for common HTML data formats with mobile deep links and indexes them for Spotlight. Take movie reviews for example. There are many common html markup standards for reviews. If your web site uses one of these formats and has a lot of traffic, Applebot may have already made it searchable in Spotlight. Rotten Tomatoes, IMDB, and Moviefone reviews can all show in a Spotlight search with the ratings displayed right inline.
Now that users are mobile first, the lines between web content and app content are becoming less relevant.
Search Empowers the User
With iOS 9 Search, context and content trump apps and ecosystems. Users can get near immediate access to the information they want across a myriad of channels. This content can be personal or public. Search continues the evolution of our digital personas to transcend platforms.
