Google Using Categories in SERPs

Here's a new thing from the Google user interface department. Try the search Zinc [google.com]. It's a metal and a mineral, nothing to do with the traditional competitive categories. I believe it's found in vitamin pills as well as used as plating on roofs. And in nickels. Oh, and eat too much of it and it's pretty dangerous.

What you will see is a set of links at the top of SERPS, above the #1 listing, allowing you to refine your seach, or restrict it to pages of a certain type. For the mineral Zinc, the cats are:

- Drug uses
- Side effects
- Interactions
- Warnings/recalls
- For patients
- For health professionals
- From medical authorities

First time I tried it had the headline "Refine results for Zinc" but that is gone now.

Clicking on one of these links leads you to a separate set of SERPS filtered by that type of pages.

If you don't see anything out of the ordinary, try This query [google.com] to get pages with Zinc warnings, or this one [google.com] to get pages from medical authorities.

There are some new items in the URL:

q=zinc+more:medical_authorities

(the "more" stuff is the category)

&cx=drugs_for_patients

(it will not work without this part)

&sa=N&oi=cooptsr&ct=col4&cd=1

(no idea what this is)

I've got screenshots as well.

Personally I like it. For SEO, and for this example search, you will now have seven SERPS in stead of just one.

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Mods, feel free to remove screenshot links below if they're not okay (it's an anonymous image hosting service, I don't get any link love out of that)

Screenshots:

(1) Refine results for Zinc [i76.photobucket.com]

(2) more: Medical-authorities [i76.photobucket.com]

Google Using Categories in SERPs

"Refine results" - aka "tabbed search"

claus

Halfdeck

steveb

Pfui

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