Google has put out a giant list of “search quality highlights” from June and July. You can see the entire list here. There are 86 different changes (not counting the ones Google blogged about previously). You can take a closer look at the changes specifically related to quality here.
There were a couple of interesting changes Google made in June, which fall into the “Alternative Search Methods” category. In fact, that is the project codename the changes were part of.
Essentially, both changes are designed to make the mobile search functionality a little more convenient for the user. The first one should do just that, if you use voice search and Google Finance regularly.
“We’ve improved finance results to better understand finance-seeking queries spoken on mobile,” Google says of the change (#82921).
The second change may make it easier to find where you’re going from the car.
“When you search for directions to or from a location on your mobile device without specifying the start point, we’ll return results starting from your current position,” Google says of change #82961.
Of course, there are plenty of other mobile-related changes on the list. Google has improved caching of different components of the SERPs, for one.
Google has also made changes to the movie showtimes feature on mobile, to improve recognition of natural language queries, as well as overall coverage.
In fact, another change Google made to Google Finance on mobile is an improved display for voice search queries.
Google says it has also improved the display of local business info in certain mobile use cases, such as highlighting info relevant to the search (phone numbers, addresses, hours, etc.).
Last week, Google announced some additional improvements to mobile quick answer results, and in late July, Google introduced the Handwrite search feature.