A goal for Google is to help users to find what they are searching for as efficient & quickly as possible. Google has answer boxes integrated into its algorithm to help with this problem. These answer boxes pop up directly under the search bar and help reduce search time. If I want to plan a football party for the New England Patriots game this Sunday, it would be helpful to know when they play. Lets go on Google and find out!
Without scrambling through the patriots website, Google instantly gives me the answer I want.
Moz published a tracking study yesterday with results surrounding Google searches that include answer boxes. Results have shown a 44% increase since September 30th. According to Moz, these answer boxes range from direct answers, stock quotes, weather forecasts, box scores & new attributed answer boxes.
The study suggests that the main reason for this jump in answer boxes is from the new attributed answer boxes. These Google results are takes from 3rd-party websites, such as Wikipedia. Here is an example of Google taking data from Wikipedia regarding a “triathlon” search.
Check out more of these search queries. Below are 10 affected examples moz expressed in there study.
- global warming
- mba
- steampunk
- dsl
- triathlon
- pollution
- firewall
- activex
- vegan
- project management