Jason Kincaid at TechCrunch is reporting that Google is testing out a new system for displaying search results to searchers.

The usual “blurb” after a URL is located is about two lines long, and consists of the usual meta summary that is defined by smart webmasters looking to maximize their SEO with relevant keywords and a good, short description of what will be found on the site.

Google is testing out two other blurb lengths: one that completely eliminates the description and another that makes it around four times longer and incorporates actual content from the page itself, focusing on content that contains the keyword used in the search.

This longer blurb would be used by searchers looking to find a more relevant site that isn’t just nice meta-data and instead holds actual useful content on the homepage. From an SEO perspective, this, if broadly implemented, may increase the need to optimize for important keywords on the landing page of site. Sites that are already well optimized may find life easier for them without other sites vulturing their traffic with misleading meta content.

This feature is apparently being tested on a few users. We’ll see if they trot it out any more.

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 28th, 2008 at 7:18 pmand is filed under Search Engine Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.