Google Changes Search Engine Results… What’s The Damage?
By Anna Johnson on March 31st, 2009Google plans to change the way it lists search engine results in two major ways. The question is: will these changes help or hinder Internet marketers?
Google’s first change is to offer more related search results – the terms found at the top or bottom of the search results page. The second is the addition of longer search result descriptions.
Google says it’s implementing the changes based on a new technology that better understands the associations and concepts related to someone’s search. It says the upshot will be more useful search results that will better help users find what they need.
Marshall Kirkpatrick of ReadWriteWeb points out that the changes, whilst benefiting users, are also likely to cause people to stay on Google longer and may also penalize websites that give people ‘too much information’.
In other words, if you’re looking for the answer to a question you have – for example, the origins of the word ‘orange’ (something I was interested in a week or so ago!) – then, if the Google’s search results actually give you the answer right there on the search page… you may be unlikely to click through to the site that gave you the answer.
I also wonder how far Google can go in terms of providing descriptions based on websites’ content, before it becomes copyright infringement.
Yep, we’re back to that old chestnut.
Or are these arguments a storm in a teacup and will search engine users continue to click through to sites they are really interested in, regardless of Google’s changes?
Sources: Ori Allon, “Two new improvements to Google results pages,” Official Google Blog, March 24, 2009, Marshall Kirkpatrick, “Google Changes Could Decrease Downstream Traffic,” ReadWriteWeb, March 24, 2009
