Google may be testing shareable search results snippets

Several people are sharing screenshots on Twitter of a feature in the Google search results that lets you share search results. It has three icons, one to share, one to open the cache page and one to open the result in a new window.

What does it look like? Here are some screen shots we found on Twitter:

How it works. You can access this feature if you are in this beta test by clicking on the three dots on the top right of the search results. Google is constantly testing new user interfaces, so if you are lucky, you might be in this Google search experiment.

Why we care. Google has tried sharing search results through Google+ and other means over the years. Here is Google trying it out again. Will this user interface launch? That is hard to say. Can it lead to searchers interacting with the search results differently? Possibly. Any change to the Google search results interface can impact traffic from Google search to your web site. Although this seems like just a test and even so, it doesn’t seem like an interface that would impact traffic all that much.

About The Author

Barry Schwartz

Barry Schwartz a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He 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.