Back in November, Google introduced app indexing, which basically lets a searcher on Android click on a Google search result and end up in an app, directly to the piece of content within that app. It is like deep linking to pages within an app via the Google search results.
That went live in December, where some early adopters added app indexing support to their apps. Now, Google is announcing 24 more apps have added support for app indexing. They include 500px, AOL, BigOven, Bleacher Report, Booking.com, Eventbrite, Glassdoor, Goodreads, Huffington Post, Merriam-Webster, Pinterest, Realtor.com, Seeking Alpha, TalkAndroid, TheFreeDictionary, The Journal, TripAdvisor, Tumblr, Urbanspoon, Wattpad, YP, Zagat, Zappos and Zillow.
Google wants you to enable these features in your Android apps and they said they support many languages. Here are some tips Google gave for those who want to implement it:
- App deep links should only be included for canonical web URLs.
- Remember to specify an app deep link for your homepage.
- Not all website URLs in a Sitemap need to have a corresponding app deep link. Do not include app deep links that aren't supported by your app.
- If you are a news site and use News Sitemaps, be sure to include your deep link annotations in the News Sitemaps, as well as your general Sitemaps.
- Don't provide annotations for deep links that execute native ARM code. This enables app indexing to work for all platforms
Forum discussion at Google+.
