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March 06, 2008
Google's Extra Search Box And Load Times.
By Scott Goodyear
Ranking on your company name, product name, etc. just became that much more important. Perform a search on various brand and company names like Wikipedia, Best Buy, New York Times, and others and you'll find an extra search box just below the first result. By adding keywords to this search box, it will further refine a search so that results come only from the listed site.
What is it?
Perform a search on a company name like Best Buy and you will get a result like this:
Add more to the extra search box, like mp3 player, and you will end up with a search like this: mp3 player site:bestbuy.com While you could perform this same search in Google's advance search area, it was probably thought to be a little confusing and unfriendly to searchers as it took them out of the normal search process.
The good news.
If you run a large site, the new extra search box can help searchers who want info from your site, and your site only, to dig into your site's content.
If you have a more vague/generalized domain or company name, that uses a common turn of a phrase like "best buy", this may also help to a degree. Searchers often start with general searches and then work into more specialized searches, this is often associated with a process called the "long tail" of searching. But this new search box may prevent some long tail searches from occurring or benefiting competitors. This is because...
Searchers want to go to sites that appear to be authorities. Sites that rank well are often perceived as "official", the "best", etc. If you have additional bells and whistles in your search listing, some searchers may attribute your site to having more importance than competitors.
Below, no extra search box, but which listing would have more perceived value or authority? Which would cover more of the search results page above the "fold"? A simple listing or one that included extras?
To sites that end up with an extra search box, this may be quite a boon. Searches may end up spending more time digging through search results related to the first site rather than checking one page from the search result, clicking back, then checking result 2, 3, 4, etc. from other sites.
The not so great news.
-If you are a small site, for now at least, it doesn't look like you will be included in this process. It seems like only large, authority sites are getting this extra search box.
-This doesn't seem to be applied to sites based on a general algorithm. Not all large sites have this applied yet. For example, large, well known, e-commerce sites like Best Buy, Think Geek, Target and others get a search box, however sites such as Circuit City, Frys, Safeway, CostCo, Ikea, and others seem worthy of the extra search box but do not have them in today's Google searches. Sites with lots of great, searchable content like Slashdot, Wired, CNN, BBC, Fox News, USA Today, and others don't get one but there are a few sites like the NY Times, LA Times, and the Washington Post that do have these extra search boxes. It would make some sense for many of these passed over sites to end up with the extra search box feature in the future.
Not Likely For All Sites Will Get An Extra Search Box
I think that this feature has a lot of potential. There are many information sources like blogs and forums where it could be extremely handy to have this feature in the search result. While I shudder to think of seeing the extra search box below every search result, I know that just about every site would want this type of feature available for their own site regardless of where they appear ranking in a search result.
To a degree, Google already does offer something similar...
If I search on best buy MP3 player there is this link: "More results from www.bestbuy.com". But this appears on the second Best Buy listing in the search results. And while other competitors on the page like CNET, Pocketdeal, and others may actually have some really good buys (best buys) for MP3 players, they are not blessed with either a "more results" link or an extra search box.
If your mental gears are spinning, search on Best Buy again, click on the +/- button near their stock quote:
Wow, that is a lot of info. But when folded up, this doesn't look too bad. Could Google add the extra search box and other features to a process like the +/- drop down? Probably, but again, Google doesn't provide this for every listing.
In the past, Googlers have stated that they often remove features from the search results page if they feel that it loads up too slow. Putting a +/- box next to each search result may not be practical if it bogs down the speed of search results. Then again, as they are starting to create blended or universal search results with lots of extra widgets and content, maybe they're willing to allow for slightly larger page sizes?
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