Google Injecting News Into Serps

peter_d · 04-26-2007, 06:25 PM

This is both a problem an opportunity for SEOs.

http://blog.outer-court.com/archive/2007-04-26-n15.html

Quote:

The old style is that Google News results sit on top of organic result as so-called onebox, but this change is about to move the news cluster (and a new thumbnail) to other positions on the page: top, middle, bottom, or anywhere else where there’s currently 10 organic results. “This allows us to rank news according to relevance in search results rather than at top of the page,” Search Engine Land quotes Google’s Marissa Mayer. Because many of us can’t see this live yet (myself included), Barry Schwartz posted a couple of screenshots.

A problem in that there is no less space for other results. An opportunity in the sense that, if you run a news site, you can get more exposure in the main SERPs.

guyfox · 04-26-2007, 06:50 PM

Thanks for the heads up. I think this bodes ill for the majority of sites, which are not news sites...

Why the heck would they mix up news and normal search results.... lets just hope they don't do it for search phrases like "medical equipment and supplies"

peter_d · 04-26-2007, 07:14 PM

Quote:

Why the heck would they mix up news and normal search results

Google make their money when people click on Adwords. It's not in their interest to have too many commercial results in the main SERPs. This is another step towards providing information-centric serps.

The business case of Google works against the business case of SEO. Always will.