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A comment on Facebook allows Google to crawl and index its mobile app. Parent comment

Re:Facebook allows Google to crawl and index its mobile app by thetrb on Monday November 16, 2015 @03:11PM (#10576816)
I thought that was just based on URLs. Similarly when I open a yelp.com link in my mobile browser it asks me whether to open it using the Yelp app or the browser.
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Re:Facebook allows Google to crawl and index its mobile app by derefr on Monday November 16, 2015 @05:35PM (#10577779)
That's yelp.com detecting your mobile browser and asking whether to redirect you to a URL using its private (yelp:// or somesuch) URL schema, which the app is then registered as the handler for.

This, on the other hand, is Google sending you directly to a yelp://-or-somesuch URL.

Basically, Google is taking charge of doing the client-negotiation step, so (if this catches on) sites don't have to worry about doing that redirect themselves any more.

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Re:Facebook allows Google to crawl and index its mobile app by mlex on Monday November 16, 2015 @06:38PM (#10578167)
On (newer versions of) iOS, you don't need to send someone to, say, yelp://rest_of_url to link them to the app anymore. In iOS 9 we have Universal App Links[0] that let you perform a redirect from an actual website link into your app.

For example, if you have Twitter for iOS installed on iOS 9 and you click on a link to https://twitter.com in a Google search result, you switch into the app's main screen immediately.

[0]: https://developer.apple.com/library/prerelease/ios/documenta...

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Re:Facebook allows Google to crawl and index its mobile app by inquisitorial on Monday November 16, 2015 @05:36PM (#10577792)
+1

I fail to see the difference between this and deep linking within the app.

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