Thursday, January 23, 2014

"About this site" A new feature on the SERP

Google just launched a really great addition for the Search Results Page (SERP).  

For most sites, there is now a gray "site information" target next to the green URL.  

If you click anywhere on the gray target, you'll get a summary of information about the site (which gives you a quick heads up about their organization, their take on things, and their perspective).  

Experiment with it a bit.  I tried the query [ paleoclimate ] and quickly found that in the first 10 links on the SERP, there were a variety of opinions about climate change--from official cautious commentary by .GOV sites, through radical denial by climate change skeptics.  

Here are a few examples from my query.  Notice how the site is described, often with date of founding, a summary of their site, and awards, if any.  







With the new "about this site" link, you can get a quick overview of the site.  Incredibly handy for doing research.  (Perhaps especially for students!)  

Official Google Blog post on "About this site."  

Search on! 

10 comments:

  1. I just tried it out with that old chestnut of search queries long used by librarians who want to show students the importance of evaluating who is behind the content on a website: search for "martin luther king" and note how one of the top 5 hits--from the martinlutherking.org domain, no less--is from a white supremacist organization. I had been hoping that the new "About this site" feature would be there on the SERP for this site, but no luck. I wonder what is going on under the hood at Google about what sites get the "About this site" feature.

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    1. Good catch. I'll ask around and post what I find out here.

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    2. feature not showing up for me - suspect dated hardware…
      Mr. Francoeur raises an interesting question that is tied to page ranking too - right?
      anyway, found this as I tried the "old chestnut" for myself - a different approach to image search that is King/Berkeley related - it's a story worth following to see the response and how they would be verified. Look forward to seeing where, if anywhere, this thread leads.
      face in a crowd hunt
      reporter's twitter (does his employer own that content?)

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    3. Research at Google posted this today. Not much more info except that it comes from the Knowledge Graph.

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    4. Short answer: Not everything is covered. We need good data from our Knowledge Graph to be able to create the site summary. I was just talking with those folks yesterday and we think we've got a solution for this case. (Which turns out to be tricky for all kinds of reasons.)

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  2. Thanks Dr. Russell for sharing it is a great new thing.

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  3. Google.co.nz doesn't show this feature, so I made Google.com the default but it still doesn't show up - I tried the 'paleoclimate' search to replicate Dr. Russell's results. A pity, because it looks interesting.
    Pam, NZ

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    1. Pam I am not sure if this is correct but I did a query [site:.nz paleoclimate] and while I didn't get the same results as Dr. Russell I did get the the new feature on the SERP. I am using the Chromebook and Chrome Browser. It doesn't work on my Android with the Chrome Browser. Just an idea.

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    2. The feature (I should have pointed out) is launched only in the US and CA. NZ is coming soon. Hang in there.

      +Rosemary -- the reason is works for you is that your running your query in CA (not NZ), so [ site:.nz ... ] won't make a difference.

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  4. a little off topic, but it does involve water… and $$$… in different forms…
    hopefully Dan didn't take the day off to go goofy footing/rag dolling at Mavericks… but it would be a fine way to burn a Friday.
    KQED
    Little Yosemite/the Goo buses
    Vinod Khosla
    Huli Cat photo
    more Huli
    different view/explanation
    bathymetry - word of the day
    from NOAA
    data sets & data products

    if the drought is really bad:
    the dude arides - Dubai
    Huacachina, Peru
    adapt and surf on

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