Google Watch: New Related Search Feature, Bigger Content Snippets
Last week Google unveiled a couple of small but interesting new Search features that will likely influence how we tackle SEO in the near term.
The first is simply an extension of it’s ‘Related Search’ functionality. As it stands, when you type a search query into Google’s search box you’re presented with a drop down list of a range of phrases which closely resemble the query that you’re typing. Broadly speaking, this is Google doing a bit of simple phrase-matching to help speed up your typing and your search activity – if I type ‘Online PR..’ then it presents me with variants such as ‘Online PR Agency…’ and so forth.
The new ‘Related Search’ functionality takes this thought a step further by presenting us with a bunch of semantically and/or thematically related search terms at the base of a SERP (Search Engine Results Page) when we’re using more complex (longer) search phrases. More than just helping us to type, this is Google helping us to think.
Most experts are saying that this neat little feature is based on the word matching technology Google acquired when it bought Orion in 2006. And it may mean some interesting changes in terms of how we think about SEO.
Clearly, one of the main principles of SEO is content optimization and creating a relevancy match between on-page content and search query. This new functionality adds an extra layer of ‘matching’ on top of this one-to-one relationship. Google is now pulling a bunch of related concepts from its index and presenting them to users as an alternative to their search efforts. This means that, in order to stay with a search thread (or intercede in one) it might pay to align yourself with both a primary keyword and a universe of (Google-defined) alternate terms. For example, a search for ‘online PR campaign best practices white papers‘ gives us alternatives such as ‘search engine optimization best practices’ and so forth… Where relevant and necessary this task will make the job of content optimization a little harder than usual. In essence, to cover all the bases we’ll need to think across keyword silos and find ways to place pages in multiple search ‘bins.’ All good food for thought…
Meanwhile, for longer search phrases, Google also announced that it will be rendering longer content snippets in its SERPs. Up until now it has been presenting us with around 180 characters underneath the main SERP links. The new format will – where Google deems it useful – give us around 250 instead. This ought to encourage new ways of thinking about how we create page metadata descriptions… The fact that the presentation logic is flexible (one search might return 180 characters, whilst another might return 250) means that it’ll be hard to optimize for this new feature. But maybe that’s not such a bad thing as we’ll simply need to focus on producing better content to be sucked from the main page body and cede control of this function to Google…
For more on the announcement from Google, check the Google developer blog here…
What’s a Social Media Agency?
Rocket science not included. Proceed at ease...
Get the Scoop on Social Media PR…
Been there, seen it, bought T-Shirt, wrote it up....
What the Hell is Social SEO?
Clue: it's not spammy and it adds value to users....
ONLINE PR & SOCIAL MEDIA AGENCY KNOW-HOW
THE SOCIAL MEDIA PR BLOG /// MORE
If Trad Digital Agencies Did Engagement/PR/Social (Who Moved My Cheese/Fees?)
Dear Mr/Ms Brand Manager, if the agency who builds your web properties is also responsible for engagement / PR / etc, then would they be building things differently? We think so…
The Google Round-up Rodeo
Every morning, my first thought on waking is, invariably, ‘What have Google been doing while I was asleep?’ I rub my bleary eyes, stretch, and let out a moan so wretched and foul that nuns across the world shudder as one, cross themselves and invoke the Holy Father. Why do I get so upset? Because no one has compiled a short blog post rounding up minor changes that Google have made to their search engine.
