Google Adding Depth to Search Results
In a week that’s going to focus on new offerings by Ask Jeeves, Yahoo, and MSN in paid search, Google has yet to introduce their new change that will counteract the interest generated by their competition. You see, companies like Ask (which I’ve always regarded as the Russell -think Fat Albert & the Cosby Kids- of search engines) and MSN may rock the boat with their new offerings. A minor change at Google, however, has the potential to change the course of a fleet of millions of galleons.
That change at Google may just be a new format of presenting organic search results, which is the butter to paid search’s bread. Google is currently testing new search results which feature the most important parts of a web site (found by Daniel of Tech Digits). Not only is the end user being served a link to the web page generated by their Google search, but also areas of interest within the web site. Take the new Google result for “Opera Browser” for example. After the traditional listing of the site’s title and relevant descriptive text, the user is served internal links into the site : Screenshots, Buy, Features, and Opera for Mobile (reminiscent of the Yahoo Search RSS tag addition to traditional search listings).
Google is not only identifying what Google determines to be the most relevant points of interest of the web site, but also a call to action : “Buy.” Digital Inspiration’s Amit Agarwall feels that Google isstacking the deck for the ultimate opportunity of showcasing their own vertical searches in such space : “[Google] testing for a new feature is definitely underway. The link to buy the product is currently pointing to the vendor’s website, I see that pointing to Froggle when this feature becomes publicly available.”
Hmmm.. so a user searches for a product they know already and instead of Google defaulting to their Froogle comparison shopping search they market their Froogle service within the organic results – nice idea. More is to be seen on what exactly Google is planning with their in-depth search results. Possibly expect some news from them this week.
