google: Google Search tests a new feature to show like counts on articles for the Android app – Times of India

Google Search has started testing a new feature for its Android app. 9to5Google reports that the tech giant will now allow some users to see the like counts for articles in the app’s Discover feed section in this limited experiment. However, users have been able to share their feedback on articles in the Google Discover feed for a long time now.
Earlier, the main aim of this feedback system was to refine the personal tastes of the users where they could upvote the posts that they liked and downvote the ones they didn’t. Later on, this system was simplified by replacing the upvoting option with a heart button on each card and the downvoting was moved to a “Not interested in this” option within a menu.
The report suggests that Google is now trying out another purpose for the like button on Discover feeds. As a part of this limited experiment, the Discover feed will now show the like counts for individual articles and videos. These like counts will reveal the number of other Google Search users that have liked a post enough to upvote it.
The change may turn out to be an interesting potential shift for the Discover feed as readers will have a visible metric to understand how well the content was received. This might affect smaller publications trying to get their content into more people’s Discover feeds as they might feel motivated to encourage the readers to click the like button.
However, there is no clear sign about the like button doing anything other than helping users to curate their feed. Some users might also get surprised to know that their feedback is also being shared anonymously as an endorsement of the post for others.
The like count can also be a helpful metric in deciding which article to read while browsing news and blog articles on social media. Notably, Google hasn’t had a dedicated social networking app in years following the discontinuation of Google+.
The report also mentions that the experimental like count was spotted within a carousel of articles all relating to a particular topic. The report found the test to be even more limited as it only spotted the like count on a single device in a single refresh of the Google Discover feed.