Google Tests Using Site Name Rather Than URL In Search Results

Jun 13, 2011 at 8:04am ET by Barry Schwartz

Google Operating System reports Google is testing a new search snippet, one that is displaying the site name as opposed to the destination URL under the search result’s description.

Here is a screen shot from the blog:

I personally cannot replicate the same behavior, what I see is the full destination URL in the search results.

Related Stories:

Related Topics: Google: User Interface | Google: Web Search

About The Author: Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry's personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here. For more background information on Barry, see his full bio over here. See more articles by Barry Schwartz

Connect with the author via: Email | Twitter | Google+ | LinkedIn

Read before commenting! We welcome constructive comments and allow any that meet our common sense criteria. This means being respectful and polite to others. It means providing helpful information that contributes to a story or discussion. It means leaving links only that substantially add further to a discussion. Comments using foul language, being disrespectful to others or otherwise violating what we believe are common sense standards of discussion will be deleted. You can read more about our comments policy here.

http://www.riccardoperini.com/ Riccardo Perini

Hi everybody,
today, in Italy, I noticed some SERPs where Google is displaying both the site name and the destination url under the search result’s description. You can see a screenshot here: http://www.riccardoperini.com/google-serp-nome-sito-url.php
http://www.thedan1984.com Dan Bochichio

I am not a big fan of this, I like seeing the actual URL I’d be going to, not the name of the Brand that the URL is associated with.
http://www.seroundtable.com/ Barry Schwartz

Riccardo, yep, we covered that a couple weeks ago at http://searchengineland.com/google-testing-url-above-search-results-snippet-78488
http://www.linkedin.com/in/kkmett Keith Kmett, CUA

I hope Google let’s people choose their preference on URL displays or not. Shortening every URL on the web isn’t what everyone wants.
http://www.riccardoperini.com/ Riccardo Perini

@Barry: thank you for your reply. Yes, I’ve seen the url shown above the snippet 2 weeks ago, but in my comment I’ve said another thing. I see a serp similar to the one reported by “Google Operating System”, but in which Google displays both the site name and the destination url, separated by a “dash” (website name – url of the page). You can see the screenshot in the page I signaled before.

E.g.
Title
Description
Site name – urlofthepage.com