Are you one of the lucky, randomly-selected Web users who has been selected by Google to test drive the newest “search blurbs” feature? If you’re not, don’t worry—we’re not either. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t cover the latest experiment to come out of Google’s labs, as it’s sure to have some effect on search engine placement strategies if it’s ever implemented as an option for all Google users.
So what is this search blurbs project? It’s Google’s attempt to let users tailor what they see on the search results page. Right now when you, and just about everyone else, searches for something on Google, they get a list of Web sites. Each has a short summary that, ideally, gives a description of what that Web site offers. Since it’s usually the first thing a user reads about a particular Web site, it’s also a section that gets a lot of attention from those of us specializing in search engine placement strategies.
However, sometimes that summary can look like gibberish and some Webmasters decide to make no attempt at writing coherent sentences and just list keywords, hoping that it will boost their site in the rankings. That’s really not a very good technique in search engine placement strategies, but it’s still one that appears all too often in Google search results.
The search blurbs test-users now have the option of either seeing search results with no summary underneath, seeing a 161 character summary, or seeing a 638 character summary. If it’s ever released, and there’s no guarantee that it will be, that means users will be able to change their search blurbs, or summary settings, as they see fit. Moreover, it could have specialists in search engine placement strategies scrambling to find the best way to utilize the longer, 638 character summary. If a user doesn’t think summaries will help her find the right page in her search, she can turn them off. If she wants lots of information from the search results, then she can select the 638 character option.
This may change a lot of search engine placement strategies with regard to the summary feature of a Web page. It’s something that we will certainly be watching closely.
Tags: Ethical Search Engine Optimization, search circus, search engine placement strategies