Google snippets tweak takes searchers one step further
Google has launched a new feature to make it easier to find the precise information you want from lengthier Web pages. At the moment it appears to work most prominently with Wikipedia, but the search giant says it could theoretically work with most sites.
The new tool is part of the snippets feature: the one or two lines of text from a site which appears in search results to give users a better idea what a particular page offers. While this is useful, it doesn’t always give the best overview of lengthy Web pages, particularly those which deal with a subject in some depth.
One example is “second world war”, for which the first result is (as so often these days) the relevant Google Web page. The snippet reads “World War II, or the Second World War (often abbreviated WWII or WW2), was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world’s nations…”
That’s useful, but doesn’t give you that much detail about the types of information available on the page. However, with the new feature in place, the snippet is now followed by links to “Background”, “Chronology”, “Pre-war events” and “Course of the War”. Each of these links takes users directly to the relevant section within the page.
Wikipedia is one of the sites which most benefits from the feature: that’s partly because it’s so popular in search results, but also because its millions of pages are organized (behind the scenes) with a consistent format and style which breaks every page into settings. However, other sites can benefit from the feature: Google gives the example of a search for “good cholesterol level” which now not only gives users a result for the American Heart Association, but also an option to jump straight to that page’s “Your HDL (good) cholesterol level” section.
Google says its search engine will automatically decide where to offer these options, but advises webmasters that they can increase the chances of being picked up by organizing long pages into distinct sections with tables of contents linking to anchors (links within pages) which have descriptive titles (eg “Pre-war events” rather than “section 2”.)
The feature isn’t exactly going to revolutionize searching, and in most cases it will simply save a click or two. But every tiny step counts when it comes to improving the overall search experience.
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