Google Featured Snippets and Improvements

[engine]

Google's Danny Sullivan has posted a reintroduction, and about some improvements to featured snippets.
You can now interactively select a featured snippet specific to your requirements.
In other cases Google may show more than one featured snippet related to the original search. This, it's suggested, will help where there is contradictory information on a topic. [blog.google...]

[Wilburforce]

This, it's suggested, will help where there is contradictory information on a topic.

"Add some parenthesis any where..." is not a sign of erudition. Is that what he means?

[keyplyr]

Multiple featured snippets are just another tactic to keep users on Google's page and possibly click an ad or two.

Thus obscuring websites even further.

[engine]

Ten blue links went away a long time ago. That's why all these opportunities are important for anyone serious about their site.

[keyplyr]

My properties do very well in the snippets, but there's not much room there for too many players.

However, what really irks me is when they screw up and use my content and image, then link it to a competitors page!

[MrSavage]

I have a different perspective for the word "opportunities" in this case. Credibility is a terrible thing to waste. Strategically speaking these so-called "improvements" (for Google and users) are good to keep track of. As in, if ever you had any doubt about worthwhile investments of time and effort, think of this as "another brick in the wall".

[BrandonSheley]

As a site owner I wonder how long it'll be until the whole first page is just 3 or 5 snippets of sites Google thinks you want.
As a user this seems like a great thing, I don't mind finding my answer and not having to clickthrough to a site which might have ads and/or be slow.

I'm torn

[keyplyr]

Hello BrandonSheley and welcome to WebmasterWorld [webmasterworld.com]

[iamlost]

Snippets on search query results pages are merely the testbed albeit one with the additional benefit of, as keyplr mentions, holding a visitor by answering rather than referring them on as in days of yore long past.

Snippets are the foundation of Google Home.
And there are no links however miniscule or vague gray in that usage. I'm sure G appreciates your freely proffered properly annotated fairly used content.

[MrSavage]

I don't want to sidetrack too much from the OP, but wouldn't everyone want to own a music radio station that didn't have to pay for the music it plays? Nothing but profit! Let me give you the gasoline for your engine at no charge and I will not gain financially from it even though I spent my time and effort attaining/creating that gasoline. I do this, for the betterment of mankind. Free for you to monetize. It's a heart warming novel.

[EditorialGuy]

As a user this seems like a great thing, I don't mind finding my answer and not having to clickthrough to a site which might have ads and/or be slow.

It can be a great thing for a publisher, too, if the publisher supplies more information than the snippet or answer box can (and especially if the publisher is interested in acquiring visitors who aren't just drive-by users).

[BrandonSheley]

Thanks keyplyr, I know I have an account from 2006 or 07 but the email I had tied to it is long gone so I made a new account.

Very true EditorialGuy, fitting a site full of info into a snippets sounds time consuming though.