When Google makes changes and adds new features, the implications for website owners can be significant.
A new feature that Google announced at its Searchology event yesterday falls into that category.
When performing a search on Google, you'll notice a new "Show options..." link that, when clicked, offers a number of new options for better refining a search.
These new Search Options give searchers the ability to easily limit search results to specific types of content sources (including Videos, Forums and Reviews) and to limit search results by how recent they are (eg. results 24 hours fresh).
There's also the ability to toggle on the display of images from the pages listed in the results and to display more text from the pages.
The implications of the new Search Options are easy enough to understand: websites that put themselves in a position to take advantage of them could potentially reap more organic traffic from Google.
Here are some suggestions:
- If your website can make use of video, forums, reviews, etc., now's as good a time as any to consider adding them. By building up this content, you'll be in a better position to leverage the increased number of searches for this content that Google's new option offering is likely to spur.
- Provide frequent content updates. While I've always found regular content updates to be a boon to Google love, there's no doubt about it now: by keeping your content fresh, you'll improve your chances of being found when a searcher limits a search to recent results.
- Pay greater attention to content and imagery. Since searchers can now view more text and choose to display images from pages, website owners now have a greater ability to influence a click by making sure that page copy and imagery is appealing.
Patricio Robles is a tech reporter at Econsultancy. Follow him on Twitter.
1:03PM on 13th May 2009
Wow! I hadn't heard about this! Great post and thanks for sharing this new news. I'm curious to know how they (Google) determine some of this ... for instance, how they know if it's a "review" or not ... simply through the meta source referencing it as such? Well, thanks again and a great reminder to update my sites consistently and to get busy with more video! *SmiLes* Suzanne
4:11PM on 13th May 2009
Google have been trying to push this kind of personalised search for a long time, the problem they have is that people do not know that they can use personalised search, they also do not know how to use the extra functionality Google supplies. Although it’s an excellent addition to the search results I foresee it only being used by power users.
Digital Marketing Director at Cimex
3:26PM on 14th May 2009
Fair point SEO Newcastle. Ask.com have been playing around with bells and whistles ever since it ditched Jeeves, only to roll-back its offer to pure search - and bring Jeeves back!
As someone involved in online PR / reputational management, the additional options promise to really open up a relatively unknown topic to wider audiences.
Though I do wonder why the digital press / blogosphere hasn't picked up on the other big story here - I thought we'd see articles titled 'Premium online PR services dealt killer blow by search giant'.
One for our company blog methinks.
5:43PM on 15th May 2009
What will this mean for advertisers? can brands link themselves with particular search results so that ads targeted by date/ particular content updates?
11:19PM on 16th May 2009
I think this is a sign that people need to be focused on content and functionality for the visitor and not so much on "seo"
Tech Reporter at Econsultancy
6:14AM on 18th May 2009
SEO,
You make a valid point however the way I see it, Google (in aggregate) gets enough searches that even if only a small fraction of users use Search Options, we're still talking about a sizable figure here.
If anything, as Curtis Reddehase commented, this is a reminder that content and functionality are important. Those who focus on these things were probably already reaping the rewards before Google put them in a position to potentially reach more people.
5:04PM on 28th May 2009
If a company is already producing content that is fresh and engaging across different formats then these filters won't add any value since they will already be getting the traffic.
They might however act as a back door for some highly coveted terms for companies that can't usually get a listing, that is if the main players go to sleep in the content production department.
7:53PM on 4th December 2009
Great post and very valid comments. Keep up the good work!
6:23PM on 18th December 2009
thankfully, this was phased out pretty quickly.