Receive the weekly sampler of posts and "Resource of the Week".
Subscribe »

Enter your
email address:

My Account »


Bookmark and Share

Testimonial?
If you find ResourceShelf useful, please supply a testimonial »








Home > ResourceBlog > Article

« All ResourceBlog Articles

 

Bookmark and Share   Feed

Friday, 22nd January 2010

Google Introduces "Answer Highlighting" and "Rich Snippets for Events"

A new post on the Google Blog introduces two new features that will be rolling-out across Google.com in English during the next few days. The blog post has a few illustrations but in a nutshell, one of new features builds on the Google Squared technology that was introduced last year. According to the site, as of today, Google Squared itself, a part of Google Labs. Google Squared focuses on adding structure to unstructured web data.

So, how how's it going to be used?

Answer Highlighting helps you get to results more quickly by seeking out and bolding the likely answer to your question right in search results list. The feature is meant for searches with factual answers, such as [meet john doe director], [[john lennon died], or [what was the political party of president ford]. If the pages returned for these queries contain a simple answer, the search snippet will more often include the relevant text and bold it for easy reference.

Of course, info pros (especially school librarians) need to remind people that even if the answer comes via this new service, Google is not the source of the information. Also, it's important to make sure users where the info is coming from and in some cases how current it is.

The other new feature introduced today are "Rich Snippets for Events." It's primarily for webmasters who have been working with Google's Rich Snippets since May, 2009. "Snippets" allow webmasters to add structured data in a standard format to web pages.

Today, we're announcing support for a new Rich Snippets format for events. The new format improves search results by including links to specific event names, dates and locations. Here's an example of a new event result from livenation.com if you search for

The new result format provides a fast and convenient way to identify pages with events and click directly to the ones you find interesting. If you're into Hip Hop Karaoke, you can quickly find out when and where the next show is in Irving Plaza, and click for more info. We've been working with a few sites to ramp them up for our initial launch, but it will take time for other webmasters to start implementing the new markup.

Source: Official Google Blog

See Also: Google Webmaster Central


Category:

Views: 543




blog comments powered by Disqus

« All ResourceBlog Articles

 

Read about the FreePint FamilyFreePint Family

A family of resources to help information workers be more effective, raise the value of information in their organisations and contribute to success. Read more »


FeedLatest Family Articles:


Click to view the article Quilting big data threads
Thursday, 24th May 2012

Recently I have found myself cooing over visualisation maps (and heat maps) of health and well being resources. The content rich data is overlayed with mapping technologies, and some interesting themes and patterns are emerging.


Click to view the article The fallacy of information overload
Wednesday, 23rd May 2012

A lot of the talk around social media in the last year has been around information overload. Social media has provided us with new and exciting ways to create content. But it has also meant learning new ways to manage and engage with social media tools. Are we teetering on the edge of an information overload precipice?


Click to view the article Information overload: fact, fantasy or filter failure?
Wednesday, 23rd May 2012

Information overload is a figment of your imagination. Or a failure of your filter. Or a symptom of your technological submissiveness. Depends on who you ask.


Click to view the article Newsdesk: tracking millions of pieces of information a day
Tuesday, 22nd May 2012

What if you had to sort through 3.5 million articles and social media posts a day and try to pull out the most relevant items for your organisation? What if you then had to cobble it all together into something readable for your top groups and executives in your organisation?


Click to view the article Alacra Compliance adds managerial oversight
Tuesday, 22nd May 2012

Alacra Compliance saves time by aggregating information from both free and fee-based sources and enabling users to conduct an accurate federated search across these sources (coined “simultaneous search” by Alacra).


All Family Articles »
Family Articles by Category »


Tell us what you're working on,
and we'll talk to you about how FreePint can help »


FreePint Family Testimonials

"Fabulous resource to learn of unique tools and insights. Very useful." Manager, Futures and Forecasting, Virginia, USA

More testimonials »






Subscribe

Subscribe to the ResourceShelf Newsletter and receive the weekly sampler of posts and Resource of the Week.

Find out more »

ResourceShelf sponsored by:

Article Categories

All Article Categories »

Archive

All Archives »