Google’s big Pixel 7 and 7 Pro reveal is slated to happen on October 6, but before that, the company held another annual event. Search On is Google’s yearly event that it uses to showcase everything that is new in Search and related products, like multisearch for Lens and tons of new features for Maps. But even an old product like Google Search is in for some select enhancements. You can look forward to Google giving you results before you’re even done typing. Plus, prepare for Google Search to become a lot more visual and video-based.

In a blog post, Google explains that it wants to become more proactive about the results it gives you, working to “make it so you’ll be able to ask questions with fewer words — or even none at all — and we’ll still understand exactly what you mean.” In a first step towards this goal, Google Search will give you answers even as you are still typing out your queries. In an animation, Google shows that you will see short autocomplete suggestions below the entry field as you type. Once you hit these, a small card with details for your query will appear, along with further information.

When you don’t exactly know what you want to find just yet, Google will give you an extra row of search suggestions. For example, you might research which places to visit for vacation, so as you start typing “best mexico cities,” Google will give you different angles to take. It offers to autocomplete with terms like “for families,” “for expats,” “to visit,” “to retire,” and more. Once you tap these, you’re presented with a collection of cities as preliminary results, specifically tailored to the suggestion you selected. You can then choose any of these cities to get to the Google results for that location. In a sense, Google is cutting out the usual websites that would normally give you a list of “10 best cities to visit in Mexico for families” or so.

That isn’t all, though. Google is also revamping how search results are displayed for certain topics. It’s using the Mexican city of Oaxaca as an example. The new search is supposed to be a lot more visual and contextual, with Google displaying story-like scrollable collections of images and videos close to the top, shortcuts to weather and directions, and short informational blurbs pulled from Wikipedia.

It’s not too terribly different from how Search currently works when you compare the actual content in the old design above and the upcoming interface below, but it looks like you will be able to interact with a lot more elements that would previously have you visit Google Maps or other services. The presentation itself is also much more visual, with Google moving to a two-column card interface that makes clear boundaries between each search result.

Google will add additional recommended search topics to results. Below the “show more results” shortcut to see more links, you can scroll down to other recommended searches like “historic sites in Oaxaca,” “Oaxacan art scene,” “Oaxaca music traditions,” or “How to cook Oaxacan mole.” All of these offer a high-level overview with some of the best web results displayed in cards along with images. Taken together, it's clear that Google wants to counter TikTok with these changes, making Search more visual and video-heavy. After all, young folks are increasingly flocking to the social media platform for travel and food recommendations, and that's a scary proposition for Google.

Last but not least, Google is also bringing some enhancements to its Search app on iOS. The application is finally updated with Material You elements (or, more specifically, Material Design 3) like a bigger bottom bar and a revamped search entry field. The app also gets a new side-scrolling carousel of shortcuts below the search bar, allowing you to get shopping results for your screenshots, translate text with your camera, search your photos on the web, identify songs—basically, features you know spewn across different places on Android, but collected in one central hub for people with iPhones.

While the iOS changes are rolling out as we speak, the new and more contextual search will only be available “in the coming months.” It remains to be seen if Google will actually be able to pull through with these changes. They might upset specialized travel websites losing out on traffic or regulators who see Google overstepping boundaries with this new layout, with the company potentially over-representing its own services like Google Maps and YouTube rather than giving a more organic overview of the web.