Google's new search refinements - how will it affect you?
Posted on 25th March 2009 at 8:16 am by
Ian Macfarlane
Google has announced two changes to how it displays its search results pages. These changes have been rolled out across 37 languages worldwide. In this post, we explore what the changes to their "search refinements" means to webmasters.
Google has recently made changes to their “search refinements” feature. These are the links that Google includes at the bottom (and sometimes at the top) of their search results pages which provide a number of suggestions for a searcher to narrow their search down.
Google has introduced new technology that can “better understand associations and concepts related to your search”. Aside from leading to changes in the search refinements which they display, they have also increased the number of these that they may show.
For example, when searching for [principles of physics], you will see many such suggestions now:
Image courtesy of Google.
How might this affect you?
Firstly, as the algorithm powering these search refinements has changed, this means that many of the suggested searches will also have changed. If your site used to get traffic from people clicking on these, it may no longer do so as this particular suggestion may no longer be listed. Conversely, your site may suddenly start to receive traffic from new search refinements.
Secondly, as the number of search refinements has increased, this means that the chance of clicking on any particular one will have decreased.
Thirdly, a combination of an increased number of search refinements and (if we believe Google) an increase in the relevance of these suggestions will likely lead to an increase in the number of searches who use them. This is obviously good for sites which rank well for the suggested searches of high-traffic queries, particularly when these refinements are listed at the top of the search page rather than the bottom. It will also obviously lead to an increase in longer-tail searches.
However, this is not all good news – for every site gaining visitors, another site has to lose them. It is likely that the number of searchers clicking through to page 2 and beyond will decrease as searchers use these links instead, so sites which rank on page 2 for high volume queries (which can still drive a fairly significant amount of traffic for top terms) will likely see a decrease in their traffic for these terms.
The location of the search refinements on the search results page for a particular query will also affect their impact on traffic. Where the search refinements are included at the bottom of a results page it may distract visitors away from site sites ranking just above it, but where Google places them at the top of the results page the impact could potentially be much greater – searchers may click directly onto one of these search suggestions rather than looking through any of the top 10 sites they searched for.
The action that webmasters need to take from this is simple – in addition to the keywords that site owners should already be targeting, they also need to look at the most important search refinements. Look at the most popular searches in your industry niche and look at the search refinements that Google provides. These are keywords that you might want to target next.
After this simple keyword research step all of the usual keyword suggestions apply as per normal (include the most important words in your title tag, try to include the words in the same order, etc). Where Google places the search refinements at the top of the page rather than the bottom, these should be given higher priority as they will likely drive a far larger percentage of traffic than where they are included at the bottom of the page.
How will this change the shape of search?
- The short tail - Searchers will be encouraged away from the more common shorter-tail queries, so the short-tail will likely shrink to an extent.
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The middle tail - The number of refinements that will be suggested is limited – therefore, we foresee a fattening of what might be termed the “middle-tail”, that is, queries which are not huge traffic drivers but which are still searched for on a regular basis.
- The long tail – The true “long tail” of search queries is distinctly different in nature. Remember that Google has said that roughly 20-25% of search queries they have never seen before. The long tail will be affected to an extent, as people may find what they want via query refinements rather than resorting to long queries, but there will always be users who type unusual queries into the search engines.
As with any change in Google there are winners and losers. Searchers will be more likely to use a wider variety of search queries, meaning that the number of potential visitors will be spread out more evenly across multiple queries. As different websites will rank for different terms, this may result in a “spreading out” of visitors across a greater number of different web sites.
Sites that ranked well for high traffic terms might potentially see a drop in traffic, but the increase in search precision from these more targeted phrases should hopefully mean that searchers are directed to the pages on your site that are most relevant to what they are looking for. That, I think we can all agree, is good for everyone.
File under:
google
language
international
long tail
keywords
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Posted on 11th May 2009 at 8:59 am by seo services
Nice article really good job keep it up and thanx to share this information