Google site search in SERP

[Conficio]

Has anyone noticed the (new) site search in Google's SERPs?



K<o>

[thindenim]

wow, haven't seen that before!

The big department stores seem to have it too marks and spencer - Google Search

john lewis - Google Search

Although ebay don't which is strange.

[thindenim]

more info on this here

Official Google Blog: Search within a site: A tale of teleportation

[Dubbya]

Great find Conficio! Thanks for the example link ThinDenim!

That's pretty sweet, especially if you're an online retailer. Now, how to best ensure that the search box shows up....

The search box uses the "site:" operator. For example, searching Marks & Spencer for "leather chairs" yields a SERP dispalying the search phrase "leather chairs site:marksandspencer.com"

I'm thinking listing all your products in Google Base might help.

Anyone got any ideas, recommendations or opinions on this?

[Dubbya]

Just tossin' this out there, but wouldn't it stand to reason that this coincides with the "data sharing" authorization request we've been seeing in Webmaster tools?

I'm thinking that the additional data is what they're using to enable the site search box in the serps pages.

From their FAQ:

What does it mean to share my Google Analytics data with Google products only?

If you choose to share your site's data, Google will use the data to improve the products and services we provide you. Additionally, only users who have opted to share their site's data with Google may use these new or improved services.

Source: Frequently asked questions for the Google Analytics data sharing options


interesting to say the least....

[erikko]

it's another way of Google to filter searches IMO

[wige]

On the same page, they indicate that this data sharing will only affect SERPs on an aggregate level:

Your website data will not be used to affect your natural search results, ad quality score or ad placement. Aggregate data across many customers will be used to improve our products and services.

This tells me that they may use the shared information to determine user behavior in different industries or related to different types of queries based on averages and patterns across sites, but generally a single site would not be adjusted based on this information. I think the data sharing may be leading to the addition of statistical comparisons so that you can see how your site performs against other sites in your industry, such as a note on your conversions report that says "Your site has a 1% conversion rate. Other sites like yours have a 3% conversion rate. Buy AdWords. Now. Trust me, I have graphs." or something similar.

I always thought that the features such as sitelinks and the new site search represented a failure of SEO for anything beyond branded searches. Basically what Google is saying by displaying this is "We know you are looking for something on this site, we just can't figure out what" because the search is either so general, or your site is so unfocused that the engine gets confused. For example, if you sell a dozen types of products, but a search is done on your brand, a sitelink or internal search would be expected. However, any search more specific than that (brand and product type, or just product type) is going to be a failure if the search engine gets confused and displays sitelinks. I remember doing searches for "sometheater schedule" when sitelinks first came out, and getting the list of links, which indicated to me that Google could see the site to take me to, but couldn't figure out which page had the schedule on it.

[incrediblehelp]

Great explanation wige.