Google displaying an additional search box in SERPs

Posted by: Marketing Guy Date posted: March 5th, 2008 Published in: Google, Local Search, Search Engines

Check this out:

 Google displaying search box in SERPs

Pretty neat huh?  I’m seeing the additional search box added to quite a few SERPs today - seems to be only for site names just now.  I know TheBestOf use the Google Search Appliance for internal searches and I also see the search box on results for Youtube, Amazon and a few other big names.

Searching using the additional search box simply carries out a Google search for the keywords + site:domain.com, rather than producing customised search results from the company using the the search appliance (which would have been cool).

What’s worrying is that it is a slight step onto the toes of webmasters here.

  • Say someone searches for your company name and they get this secondary search box that prompts them to “search your site”.
  • Say then they decide to search your site.
  • How do you feel about them getting these results:

Google displaying local results for site searches

Yup, 10 nice local results in what is essentially a refined site: search.

Explain to me the relevancy of that for users please Google?  They search for a business by name and instead of serving the right information, Google prompts to refine the search and plasters in some more results from other sites.

I guess as a new feature it’s pretty cool, but you have to wonder if everyone will be happy about the potential use for this.  It’s all very well Google setting out on a mission to index the web, but surely there has been a line crossed when Google can potentially show results from your competitors when a Google user is…

  1. Specifically searching for YOUR business…
  2. Wanting to search YOUR site…

What do you think?  Would Search Engine Watch be happy if a user used their site search and was returned results from Sphinn? Hmmm. :)

Scott

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Comments

  1. Posted by: JonnyScott Date posted: 9th March, 2008 at 2:47 pm

    Hi Scott,

    I am interested to understand the qualification for this feature. I don’t mean the initial intent test - being sure that the user is looking for that specific domain aka sitelinks - but rather once passed that gate, do you think you need a certain number of pages? A broad range of thematic content?

    I haven’t really look at a decent number of examples but I notice “BBC” don’t qualify. Why would they not make it? Maybe they don’t get past that first gate. They should though…. There are lot of matches for similar sub domains beyond the www one which leads to SERP saturation. Lol is the award even an indicator of poor nav!? as measured by magic beetles added to the toolbar or should I buy a GSA search box tomo?!? Anyway nice to see you dont have to worry about qualifying that for TBO, I will have to explain this at some point to somebody who wants to know.

    Other thoughts:

    - Generally this will encourage some people who wouldn’t normally do so to look at their site command output.

    - The cynic in me says that yeah this feature is helpful, but it also encourages people to go back to drink from the Google cup - that big white screen where the money rolls in from the ads.

    - In your Solihull accountant example It seems the onebox/map results trigger from front loading the KW+GEO at the front of the search. If Google where to change the order and have “site:thebestof.co.uk accountant solihull” they would solve your problem of dragging people away from the brand original. I bet that’s busting some CHI somewhere.

    We could say that this is another cut and shut feature, but I am sure they though and tested this a fair bit… It’s not easy being a Google Engineer.

    Finally have a look at some of that URL syntax…

    NEW - http://www.google.com/search?q=accountant+solihull&oi=navquery_searchbox&sa=X&as_sitesearch=thebestof.co.uk

    MANUAL - http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=site3Athebestof.co.uk+accountant+solihull&btnG=Search

    I had a break down of what those codes meant somewhere but some of that is new…

    Peace

  2. Posted by: Marketing Guy Date posted: 9th March, 2008 at 7:45 pm

    I’m guessing the requirement to get the search box is to have Google involved with the company in some way (search appliance, etc) - seems to be the case with the few examples I checked but haven’t looked into it too deeply. IIRC the BBC used to use Google but changed a while back.

    Yeh I agree that the change makes people rely that little bit more on Google and I’m not sure I like that.

    Re: Solihull example, yeh I noticed that shortly after I posted. I guess it could be a bug - with the size and scope of sites that this feature is appearing on, chances are that local type results weren’t looked at while testing. It might change in the future (and tbh I think it should).

    Re: new syntax for URLs - sa=X is tracking code which has been around for a while - the navquery part is probably just complimenting the tracking code?

    Get a website built ya fecking slacker and don’t spam my blog with links to parked domains!

  3. Posted by: SEO Date posted: 13th March, 2008 at 7:47 pm

    I have first seen one of them the other day. Great idea! Shame you can’t have a search box popup for every result.

  4. Posted by: Marketing Guy Date posted: 13th March, 2008 at 7:50 pm

    Apparently it’s displayed for sites that Google detects users may want to refine their search query - so will only likely be larger sites for the time being. Still not sure if I like it or not. :)