latest SERPs presentation change

[chaumi]

This is potentially interesting, depending on how it pans out/what it displays....don't think it'll give anything we don't already know...but might be indicative of a wider plan......

https://blog.google/products/search/learn-more-and-get-more-from-search/

[gil.langelaan]

Hi chaumi!

Yes, that's interesting.
Thank you for sharing here!

Ate you planning to change something on your website? Or as you said you

don't think it'll give anything we don't already know...but might be indicative of a wider plan......

so you're already ready?

[PROFRBcom]

I love how in the example page from Google, they are pushing more vaccine propaganda.

[PROFRBcom]

...don't think it'll give anything we don't already know...but might be indicative of a wider plan......

Firstly, it is interesting to see at a glance that other sites have, or have not, linked to the page from within the search results.

Secondly, what "wider plan" do you think this fits into?

[chaumi]

So if I'm understanding it correctly, the plan is to be (much?) more transparent about why a page (or a set of pages) is/are being served up as the answer to a searcher's query.

Depending on what they present with this info (and how deep/accurate that info is), it may be useful for us.

So when I said "probably won't tell us anything we don't already know", of course I mean all the stuff all of us should already know ie a page is there because it answers the query, it has links, it's crafted/presented well, it has great content, it's had some ('legal' or 'illegal') 'trickery' or educated/clever/evil manipulation done to it (delete or add to as appropriate, but all are applicable as we know).

But there's a chance that they'll spell these out a little so we can actually see why a page we think we're better than is above us, or more to the point why Google think it’s better. Again, very much depends on what info is being displayed.

So why?

For the everyday searchers benefit?

Not seeing this myself, but then I wouldn’t class myself (or any of us, actually) as everyday searchers. We search with the eyes/mind/intent of a webmaster (mostly, but not always of course).

So does your standard searcher care why one page is higher than another,assuming it answers their query? I’d suggest not.



For webmasters’/site owners’ benefit?

Yeah, maybe. From a webmaster perspective you could translate this as another attempt by Google to improve content in general across the SERPs, this time by showing a bit more detail about what level you need to aspire to (again, if you didn't already know what that level was...I’d suggest that in our game we’re more advanced than your average ‘how to turn a tap on’ website and we have a much better clue about what’s going on)



Which brings us to the bottom line. Who it’s really for. And, of course, that’s Google (and Google’s profit margins).

So what might be behind it?


1.Maybe Google have been getting complaints and want to show some transparency/explain better to the general searcher public. Seems unlikely.

2.As before, it’s to improve the overall standard by showing webmasters more about what they should be presenting. That’s a possible, and ties in with a lot of what’s been happening recently.

3.It’s a genuine attempt to help searchers. We’ll have to delay judgement on that till we see what’s being displayed and how...but as before, do they really care as long as their query is answered? And we know (or have been told for a long time) it’s all about speed. A searcher just wants an answer, not to have to read or even think about something else to decide whether the answer might be applicable, then properly check it out.

4.Or is it all part of a bigger picture? Certainly I’m not clever enough to second guess every aspect of this...but a wild guess would be it ties in with the strong upcoming potential of an increase in no click results. Maybe they will use any data they can collect from the exercise to assist in detection of the real valuable pages, so they can safely pull content from those without (or with restricted) attribution (ie no link to the page, or a semi-hidden one). Maybe they will use the data to see which results are getting ‘questioned’ by searchers looking to see why they are there, which might be an indication that those aren’t really answering the query well enough.


With all this, it’s guesswork...until we actually see what is being shown, how you access it, and how deep it is. On the face of it and available info from that communication, it is interesting though.