In May this year, Google started allowing iOS developers to implement App Indexing, enabling signed-in users to open content that surfaced from mobile apps directly in Google Search.
This feature is now compatible with HTTP deep-link standards for iOS 9 also. The Internet company is expecting that iOS users will begin to see app content in Safari by the end of October.
Developers will be able to get app content in the search results page on Safari for the Apple mobile operating system when they add universal links to the iOS 9 app and integrate with Google's SDK.
"App Indexing is now compatible with HTTP deep-link standards for iOS 9, as it has been on Android from the beginning. That means that you can start getting your app content into the Search results page on Safari in iOS, simply by adding Universal Links to your iOS app, then integrating with our SDK," per Google Developers.
As the process is very straightforward, Google is also getting away from app indexing support on iOS 8 and iOS 7.
Users can find iOS apps directly by searching keywords, for example "word games." Once the results show up users can directly install them from search results. Users can also get in-app contents searched for in the search results.
App indexing is something that Google has been testing for quite some time and some features of app indexing have been showing up from time-to-time since late 2013. Most of the features were focused primarily on its own Android operating system but now the company is expanding to iOS as well.
Google's effort shows that it is trying to bring mobile and the web closer to each other and also promotes apps for developers.
The latest announcement for app indexing is only for iOS and nothing is changing for Android.
