Category Archives: Search Engines

Google Suggest, the feature in Google search that suggests search queries based on what has been typed into the search box, now displays localized search results in the US. The results will be localized by region, Country specific localization was introduced last year.

Google has significantly increased the amount and depth of the data they provide for in the Top Search Queries feature in their Webmaster Tools. The data was previously limited to the top 100 queries, it now displays a much larger sampling of queries.  The data previously only provided the percentage of impressions and clicks that each query had. The data now includes the number of impressions and clicks broken down by the position of the query in the search results. The data shown can now be restricted to specified periods of time instead of set intervals set by Google. Finally, they have also added a chart that displays impressions and click for the currently active data set.

Google today announced that several weeks ago they began factor the speed that a website responds to web requests into search rankings. Site speed is not currently a significant factor with “fewer than 1% of search queries are affected by the site speed signal” according to Google. Site speed is also only currently factored in searches preformed on Google.com in English. Google did not say exactly how they determine page speed, only saying that they use a “variety of sources to determine the speed of a site relative to other sites.”

For several years Google has provided users signed into a Google account the option of receiving search results that have customized based on their previous search queries. On Friday Google announced that it will expand Personalized Search to all users. With Personalized Search, Google customizes search results in attempt to show results that are the most relevant to a user’s query when there query has multiple meanings. It will also show websites that the user frequently clicks on in search result higher in the search results. For users not signed into a Google account the customized results will be based on the searches linked with a web browser cookie. This means that a multiple users using the same web browser will receive customized results based on a combination of all users’ searches and users using multiple devices will receive different customized results on each device. The customization is based on up to the last 180 days of searches.

Google has announced that they have begun to incorporate website’s breadcrumb links into some search results. Breadcrumbs links are used to aid users in navigating the hierarchy of a website. For a small number of websites, Google will trim the URL shown under a search results snippet to just the domain name and then display breadcrumb links. Depending on how many how many and how long the breadcrumbs are they may exclude some of them. Google said that the intent of the feature was to provide “useful information about the page” and to allow users to “easily access information on broader topics”. They also said that they hope to expand the feature use in the future.