Google Adds "Answer Highlighting" to Serps. No Need to Visit Websites

[Brett_Tabke]

Taking another page out of the WolfRamAlpha and Bing play book, Google introduces Serps with answers. You may never need to visit any site again.

Google Press Release [izurl.com]

Answer highlighting helps you get to information more quickly by seeking out and bolding the likely answer to your question right in search results.

[outland88]

The best thing I see coming out of it is the possible decimation of MFA and 'thin affiliates' which serve no real purpose except to the owner.

One thing you can chisel in granite is people aren’t looking at all Caffiene is dredging up. Google is hedging it bets with MFA sites set up with its “fat cat buddies”. Once people start reporting on these sites you’ll see what Google is really up to. Content isn’t king schemes are.

[edacsac]

Which differ from Google how?

They don't, but google is just following in line. If everyone else can get away with it for years and years, why not a big co like google?

you can't have a subjective view on "garbage"

Your right. I just hate landing on a site that tries to trick me. Having webmaster skills, I find it irritating. I'm sure it's even more irritating for folks that don't notice it right away and get sucked in.

Sorry for getting off topic.

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

In antoher thread today they are discussing problems with Kaspersky blocking Google ads accidentally. Perhaps we could all subscribe to software that does just this in retaliation. ;)

[KenB]

Except that it was blocking AdSense ads, which are displayed on publishers websites. Ads on Google's search results are part of the main HTML Kaspersky's "cockup" wouldn't impact those.

[dstiles]

Loudspeaker:
Somthing like that, yes, although I haven't at the moment time to look at it in detail. Sounds a good start, though.

The problem is, as someone else pointed out, google is not helping.

As I said, I think it would push SEs into accepting it if robots.txt could block every bot that didn't read the new format. I can't see that happening soon.

[Luxor1]

I realized that this move can actually help pages with real content rank higher. I know myself that for a lot of my queries sites with paid answers pop up first, take for example expert exchange.
Last i checked, they have more than million indexed pages and they rank very well for a given question/query with no content except for start trial or whatever, to actually see the answer.
So, why they rank so high?
Probably because title is arguably most important part of the page and these types of sites are very good at SEO, keyword mashup. Secondly, Google knows they have answer, so they return best results.
On the other hand, user (at least my) frustration is growing with wiki/yahoo answers without real answer at all, so you loose your time clicking on their ad fat pages.
There are a lot of good answers in scientific places, and while they are good at science, they have "untitled" title pages, or just name of the journal repeated million times and maybe they don't rank so well.
So obviously Google feels it can't be solved by algorhythms or whatever, human intervention is needed.

[geekie]

The more I read about google, the more I think it's time to move away from being a web developer.

Ditto! They really give you that creepy feeling don't they? Personally, I think it's time to get off the Internet all together.

[geekie]

Alta Vista turned to dust practically overnight and it can happen to Google just as easily.

Yes, it can. Thank God I'm to dependant on them anymore.

serious, google is "still" to big to ignore thats how it is, but my suggestions is let them spider your Front page and thats it, also stop using there tools, use proxy for surfing, that way you cut a lot of info which they collect to expand there bizz in a evil way, do no evil is a long long time ago.

I have to disagree. "We" are the product they're selling. Pull your content and what are they left with? Webmasters have a lot more control than they realize.

[blend27]

--So, why they rank so high?--

@Luxor1

if you pay a visit to *xpert *xchange(with JS Disabled(FF NoScript) page loads faster), just scroll down the page, the "answer" most of the time is all the way down below the KeyWord-Stuffed "Cloud".

-- Secondly, Google knows they have answer--

That is the Scary part.

[loudspeaker]

The more I read about google, the more I think it's time to move away from being a web developer.

Not necessarily. Google willing, for now we are still allowed to practice the art of web development for corporate clients. Just not anything for the public, because that's what Google wants to do. In the words of Steve Jobs, "thanks to our partners". [and we'll take it from there].

[edacsac]

Just not anything for the public, because that's what Google wants to do

Hmm, that might tough luck for google. They can't be an expert in everything (or be able to determine what the "answer" is for every obscure topic), and if they think they can, my condolences for the future of the internet.

[pdivi]

They can't be an expert in everything

This all smells very familiar for those of us who were in the business in the late 90s. Internet companies who achieved scale tailored their offerings to the middle-of-the-road to get at the biggest mass of consumers. In doing so, they alienated the heavy web users, who went off in search of new solutions...and those new solutions often displaced their predecessors. Remember, Google became popular in part because Yahoo became a cluttered, ad-heavy "portal", which was unbearable for those of us who searched often.

Yahoo's portal was painful in the same way the "personalized search" is painful -- it does more than we want or need it to do.

My prediction...Google is going to drive off its early adopters, and we'll find (or start!) the next big thing.

[Eurydice]

... 1,000,000+ websites (billions of pages)...

There are somewhere between 100-150 million .com URLs (2009) (I don't know how many .edu, .info, .etc there are).

Estimates point at around a trillion pages (1,000 billion).

[TheMadScientist]

Yeah, I estimated for optimized sites and pages thinking the number is significantly lower than the number of sites registered, and if it happened on all of the sites you state can you imagine the waste of bandwidth for a few companies? They can dissect the English language (and other languages), but can't respect site owners and copyrighted material without being told to do it? Seems odd to me.