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ZDNET's key takeaways
- Gemini now has more visual search results from Maps.
- Previously, results were mostly text.
- Results now include photos, review highlights, and more.
If you use Gemini to help find restaurants, coffee shops, or other local sites, Google just made a big change to help you decide.
In a post on X, the Gemini team this team announced that its app now gives local search results in a “rich, visual format,” showing photos, tips for visiting, review summaries, ratings, and other important information from Google Maps.
Also: Gemini vs. Copilot: I compared the AI tools on 7 everyday tasks, and there's a clear winner
Previously, if you used Gemini to find this sort of information, you got mostly text results.
How to try it yourself
To give the feature a quick test, I asked Gemini for good coffee shops near me. The results started with a map with pins for all the locations listed so I could see at a glance where they are.
Scrolling down, I saw four different options, each one with a photo, a brief description, a rating summary, hours, distance away, a “People talk most about” section that shows which phrases reviews often mention, and a link to learn more. Tapping that link opened a full card for the location, including review highlights and the option to navigate there with Google Maps.
Also: Inside the making of Gemini 3 – how Google's slow and steady approach won the AI race (for now)
When I tried searching for “fun things to do nearby with my kids,” Gemini returned playgrounds, museums, and mini golf courses, along with a few bullet points for each on what makes them a good spot.
I did several more searches for restaurants and businesses, and the photos were mostly of the exterior or interior of a building (it seems to be the first photo that comes up on the company's Google business page). I tried asking for recommendations for a specific dish, curious if Gemini would present photos of that specific food at the places it recommended, but the photos were still mostly of buildings.
An improvement
The visual search results are definitely an improvement over the old way, and it's definitely an improvement over a traditional Google search. If Gemini can eventually show relevant photos too, it would go a long way toward making the app a go-to for planning.
The new visuals are available on desktop, Android, and iOS versions of Gemini.
