Bullet Points in SERP description, is that new?

[marketing apprentice]

I noticed recently google started to have a 3 line bullet points description for some retail sites.

Instead of showing the meta description or some text taken from the page in 2 lines, it's listing very short form of meta description on the first line, then taking a combination of the name, price and review rating of the top 3 items listed on page and list them in bullet points.

To see examples of this, search for something like "cd tower" and look for target.com's result.

I've seen some other results being listed this way as well, for directory sites.

Is this new or I just haven't been paying enough attention before?

[piatkow]

Just started happening on searches for my music magazine site. Top is the home page, second is the diary page which uses a table. Rows 1, 4 and 7 are returned.

[lucy24]

It's not only retail.

[g1smd]

NO. It's certainly not only retail. The first site I noticed it on, was certainly pure informational.

[Robert Charlton]

I thought I'd kick this thread back up for a number of reasons... and I'll mention up front that the results we used as an example at the start have apparently changed....

It was discussed at PubCon last week that Google has been returning "hyperlocal results", and I remembered that this discussion, from back in August, seemed to provide a good example of that.

For the [cd tower] search mentioned here, the appearance of target.com in the organic results was extremely sensitive to my browser's location setting. As I mentioned in my first Aug 26 post earlier in the thread (msg #4355652), when I shifted my default Location setting several miles closer to a Target store, target.com appeared in the #2 organic position, and with the bullet point results. Other members around the country (apparently near enough to Target stores) reported the same result in the #2 position, also with the bullet points. As noted, I also saw the bullet points in the AdWords ad.

When I've come to check this now, I'm not seeing bullet points in any organic results. I'm not seeing the target.com result in organic #2, whatever my Location setting is... and this is across browsers, cookies flushed, history off, etc. Instead, I'm seeing a target.com result consistently in the #9 spot, and that appears to be independent of location setting. Also, in the target.com organic result, there's one listing only... ie, no bullet points. (In the AdWords ad, they offer additional images as an option).

I mention all this because I've felt that all those extra organic results we've been seeing, the multiple results and the Local listings, including those with Place flags, have been part of ongoing tests, changing with each iteration of Panda (or whatever else it is that Google might be testing).

Since we've got a search term that has worked well in illustrating this behavior... and since we generally don't discuss search terms... this is a chance to check in and report what we're seeing now.

- Is anyone else currently seeing bullet points?

- Is anyone seeing target.com in a different spot?

Is it possible that Google users didn't like the bullet points enough for Google to continue showing them, or is it possible that Google has extracted a view of data from that perspective, and is now checking into something else?

Ditto with the hyper-localization... Google seems to have backed off from that on some searches. I'll go into further detail on that in another discussion. There are so many manifestations of how Google is viewing the results that it's hard to get a unified handle on it.

[pageoneresults]

Is anyone else currently seeing bullet points?

Now that you mention it and I perform various searches, no, I don't see the bullet points anymore.

Is anyone seeing target.com in a different spot?

Same spot you are, number 8.

Google's SERPs change so frequently now that I find it hard to keep up with and remember all the things they have going on. AdWords, Related Searches and Shopping Results probably needed some more room so the SERPs were trimmed down to accommodate that?

Above the fold is now pwned by Google.

[netmeg]

No bullet points, but for a search of my own that *used* to provide bullet points, I'm seeing some really weirdly formatted thing. Apparently they don't have a way to gracefully show a short result next to a long one. Looks awful. I'd rather have the bullets back.

[pageoneresults]

Is it possible that Google users didn't like the bullet points enough for Google to continue showing them.

Either didn't like them or, liked them too much. Those bullet points were very "eye-catching" and I wonder if those dark black dots drew too much attention away from other real estate?

I'm looking at results now that SHOULD have the bullet point but don't. That one extra byte, as visible as it was, may have been a little too much at this time? These results I'm looking at still have the <table> snippet and are formatted the same as when the bullet was there. The bullet has been removed. Again, I think it was a little too much visual disruption in the SERPs.

[g1smd]

A few weeks back, Google started showing snippets in table format using data from a small part of a table found on the indexed page.

At the same time, or shortly after, they stopped showing bullet point listings for data found in lists on the indexed page and instead now show the data as a table, and therefore sans bullet point.

The listings for lists do still stand out, just not as much.

[Robert Charlton]

FWIW, I just checked the [cd tower] search again. The organic Target result is now #4 with my default location that previously didn't appear unless I shifted my location close. The result now moves down to #5 when I shift the default location closer to the Target store. This appears to be repeatable.

No bullet points, but with two lines after main listings per <li> code onpage, and including price, product name, and descriptions.

[nomis5]

Exactly the same on some pages of my site. It started out as three bullet points and is now two rather silly looking lines from the table on the page. On a couple of pages Google have listed the two additional lines but they have totally misinterprted the content, that looks even sillier in the SERPS.