Google Adds More Answers & Info To Search Results

Jan 22, 2010 at 2:59pm ET by Matt McGee

Google has announced a pair of changes to its search results pages that make its search results pages more informational and give searchers information they’re looking for without having to click away from Google.com.

Events In Rich Snippets

Adding to last year’s announcement of rich snippets for reviews and people, Google has created one for events, too.

events-rich-snippets

Using the hCalendar microformat, Google will show information and links to specific events as part of the snippet below a search result. If you offer event listings, check Google’s documentation for more on how to use this. Note that Google says this will be rolled out gradually, and that using the hCalendar microformat won’t guarantee that rich snippets will show for your site.

Answer Highlighting

Google has also announced plans to add more answers and information into its search results. Google says it’s using the research behind Google Squared to power this effort to extract facts from web pages. When Google identifies a search as factual in nature, and can find the answer on a web page, it may highlight the answer in the snippet.

answer-highlights

Google says this feature is rolling out “during the next couple days” on Google.com.

Answer Highlighting may have a negative impact on search traffic to information-based web sites. Rather than referring traffic to sites and pages like these, Google is now explicitly pulling the facts from these pages and showing them in its own search results.

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Matt McGee is the Search Engine Land Assignment Editor, and offers search marketing consulting and training to businesses of all sizes. He blogs at Small Business Search Marketing and HyperlocalBlogger.com.

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