Searching for things can be boring, and the same goes to searching for things on Google. While the search engine giant has become better in delivering facts and results based on user's interest, it lacked the power to deliver the "fun" part.
On February 15th, 2017, Google is updating Search to bring "fun facts" to answer some user queries.
With the update, searching for things like animals plants, fruits and vegetables will provide some bit of trivia, as Google's Product Manager, Satyajeet Salgar, explained:
So when users use Google to search for "hippo fun facts", for example. Google will return a trivia explaining that they're excellent swimmers and can hold their breath underwater for five minutes.
The fun facts are shown inside Google's featured snippets section. Depending on the inquiry, users might also see additional questions that others have asked.
What's more, Google isn't just showing a trivia for a search query. Users can refresh their search to pull out more interesting random facts.
Salgar further said:
While to some people and Google users, this feature won't matter at all. But to some others, this can be interesting. Especially for children that are exploring the new world they are seeing, to even partygoers wanting to be trivia champs.
Google isn't providing any information about why it implemented the "fun facts" on its Search result pages. But it can be assumed that the feature serves to further the company's mission in providing knowledge to billions of people around the world.
And as more people use Google to search for those trivia fun will result in additional searches the company has to make. This has the potential to flow some advertisement dollars to the company in the process.
While these fun facts are being added, they aren’t taking anything away from the normal search results users will get. Users just need to add the phrase "fun facts" to their search query in order to get these trivia facts. Without the phrase, Google Search will only display the default search result page.