Google Music Search Results Can Now Launch Mobile Apps

Searching for and playing your favorite music on the Web is about to get a little easier. Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) introduced a new feature on Thursday that enables mobile Google search engine users to launch music apps directly from their browser whenever they search for a musician or band.

After doing such a search on Google, users can touch a link in the search results to play the selected music on their preferred music app.

At the moment, this feature is limited to United States mobile users running Google Android.

Streaming apps that are said to work with the new Google search feature include Google Play, iHeartRadio, Spotify, Tunein, YouTube and Rdio. Notably, Apple Inc.’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) recently purchased Beats Music is nowhere to be seen on that list. But Google said it plans to expand the feature to other apps and local services around the world in the near future, including Deezer, a European music streaming service.

As more smartphone users turn to music streaming apps for their music, this feature may be Google’s plan to reclaim some of those music searches, which often take place within the apps themselves instead of Google's search engine.

Google has been steadily growing its targeted advertising reach in recent months to address this issue. It expanded its AdWords program to include advertising for mobile app installs and ads that link directly back to an app already installed on a mobile device.