Last month, Google announced the launch of a new experiment called Notes – not to be confused with Google Keep, their note-taking app included with Google Docs.

The experiment can be found via Google’s Search Labs, where users can opt-in to try features the company is beta-testing. Notes allows users to view and share extra information alongside search results. Google describes its main functionality as “[letting] people share their knowledge right on Search, helping others find the best answers for their weirdest or most wonderfully unique questions, and discover what’s most useful for them on the web.”

Notes is only available to non-business accounts via the Google app on Android or iOS, so if you’re looking to give it a try, you’ll need to use a regular Google or Gmail account and opt-in to Notes through Search Labs. Once you opt-in, you can see a new “Notes” button that appears below search results in the Google app. If you tap the button, you’ll be able to see what is essentially a comment section for an individual search result.

Notes also lets users customize their comments with stickers, photos, and different art styles and backgrounds, similar to posts on Facebook and Instagram. Google also says that they will launch the ability to add AI-generated images to these notes.

On the one hand, I’m not so sure about this potential addition to Google results pages –comment sections can really quickly become a cesspool of useless information and antagonistic behavior. That’s something a lot of us have become accustomed to, but it’s not exactly a nice addition to search results, which are often a place for research.

However, in Google’s announcement, they say they are employing both AI-driven and human moderation to keep Notes from becoming just another comment section, and instead to keep it useful for users. I can see this being a good way for searchers to add additional context to results. In the example they show, using a search result for icing recipes, it’s pretty neat to get tips from other people who’ve tried out these recipes for themselves. This could certainly be a great new way to leverage user-generated content to enhance CVB search results – locals can share their favorite hole-in-the-wall spots, past travelers can give insights on their experience visiting, people can pine over the fun they had in your town back in the day… All of the best aspects of social media comments can potentially be transferred to a wider audience through Notes.

We’ll see how this pans out, and hopefully, this can become a widely used and beneficial feature of Google results. I’ll be giving Notes a try, how about you?