Google-SERPs: Longer Snippets, improved Search-suggestions

Johannes Beus
Today, Google announced and implemented two changes for a part of the SERPs. For one, the Snippets, which are text excerpts from the website, are now going to be longer than the usual two lines if the searchquery consists of at least three words. It seems that with this, they are attuning their search to the increased rate of multi-word searchqueries – users who search so specifically can probably use such an expressive snipped to decide if the search result is worth a visit. The screenshot to the right shows this nicely for the search term “traumurlaub in wanne eickel süd” (dream vacation in southern wanne eickel).

The other change is that the related-searches, which are being displayed for many keywords for a while now, are to be improved. Three years ago, Google bought “Orion” - Ori Allon, who, back then, was both seller and developer, has now written this posting in his position as “Technical Lead” of Google's Search Quality Team. Orion was about understanding connections between words and while the term “semantics” is pretty worn out already, in this case it fits rather well. The related-searches are now benefiting from a further development of said technology. Now, Google will also suggest keywords and keyword-combinations that have a content-related connection to the initial searchquery:


This way, Google goes from “real-estate bonn” to “shared apartment bonn”. This is rather nice and will likely drive the manner of searching further towards the long-tail.
Johannes Beus - on Tue (03/24/2009) at 17:22 PM

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