Google builds function to turn text into link in Chrome

Google is building a feature in Chrome to turn any text on a web page into a sharing link. That way, users can link not only to a page, but to a specific piece of text on that page.

The feature has long been available with an extension , but the latest Canary version of Chrome’s desktop variant includes a flag to enable the feature without installing an extension. The feature is called Copy Link To Text, Techdows reports .

The feature allows users to right-click on a selection of text and then get a link to the page with that piece of text highlighted. The feature can be found as a flag in chrome: // flags in Chrome’s Canary build. It is usually several months ahead and the current Canary version will come to users as an update on November 17. Whether the position will be included is unknown. Google has not commented on the find.

Google has been working on such a technique for some time, because a function in the search engine to mark the piece of text from the search result snippet on the page went live earlier this year . The snippet is the short piece of text from a web page that Google displays at the top of the search results, if the algorithm suspects that the text contains the answer to a question the user asks. Snippets have been around for several years, but now the browser automatically scrolls to the part of the page that contains that text when users click through. Google gives the url a ‘fragment identifier’ and the browser then turns that text on the page yellow. Since it is a function of a browser, no code from website builders is required for the function to work.