Google has begun including geographical region information on some search results. The information is used when supplied by webmasters, and appears in the green address line on the results that include it.

Google has started adding links to specific parts of webpages in the snippets on search results pages.

Google gives the example of the result for the Wikipedia entry for "Trans Fat." The snippet provides links to History, Chemistry, Presence in food, and Nutritional guidelines. These are all sections of one page that the user can go straight to from the results page.

Earlier this year, Google launched its search options feature. This is a clickable link on search results pages, which provides a list of options to let you refine your search by a number of different parameters.

Google has introduced a new feature to search results, making it easier to find forum posts related to topics you search for. When forum sites have more than one relevant discussion going, Google will link to them under the main result.

While Google’s Matt Cutts has certainly provided a wealth of helpful tips via the company’s Webmaster Central YouTube channel, he is not the only one to do so.

In case you haven’t noticed by now, Google has gotten bigger. The homepage and search results pages now have a bigger searchbox, complete with a bigger font when you type in a query.

There is a scam going on inside of Google search results called Google Cash, aka: Google Money Tree, aka: Google Treasure Chest. This is where alleged scammers misrepresent themselves as being affiliated with Google, and advertise a low-cast kit, which would enable people to make money.

Microsoft is working on a new feature for Bing called "Bing and Ping." This is a means to share your search results with friends. Bing’s "decision engine" nature provides plenty of content that users may actually want to share. Nicholas Kerr of the Bing Team explains:

Some UK Google users have noticed that search results pages are showing more results from .com sites these days, than in the past. They are used to .co.uk sites getting better rank, and assuming that they are more relevant to their geographic location.

Certainly in some cases the .co.uk site would be more relevant to a UK searcher, but that is not always the case. Google’s Matt Cutts has posted a video in which he answers a question on this subject from a user. The question was:

Google is now showing images in universal search results for location queries. They have shown maps for some time, but the addition of images enriches the results that much more.

Today Google made a couple of announcements involving the expansion of offerings into more languages. They’ve announced that the new optimized SERP pages for iPhones, Android devices, and feature phones are now available in over 60 countries and 38 languages. In addition, the company has announced an advanced translation feature in the newest release of Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer.

The Mobile SERPs

Google appears to have rolled out (to what extent we’re not sure) a design change to its search results pages. The change seems to be very minor and insignificant, but Google altering SERPs is just something that can’t be ignored by the search industry.

The (hardly) noticeable changes are a little bit of padding on the left-hand side, and a slightly smaller version of the Google logo. It’s just enough to make you wonder if it’s changed or if you’re just crazy.

Among SEO professionals, there isn’t always consensus on precisely which and to what degree site factors contribute or detract from rankings on Google because the factors actually vary by industry. There are indeed, a number of contentious issues: markup and content quality, use of title tags, site organization and even arguments that Google Analytics data factors in to site rankings. Not likely (yet), but certainly up for debate among SEO professionals.

Advertisers using paid search may find that they have to adapt to the habits of searchers. And there have been indications that searchers are using longer queries to find what they are looking for these days.

comScore shares some rather interesting data showing that the number of paid clicks has grown 3 times slower than the total number of queries in the US since January 2007. Look at these graphs:

Update: Google also posted on the Enterprise Blog about how you can utilize richer snippets for Site Search.

Original Article: Today at Google’s Searchology event, the company announced (among other things) that it was rolling out richer snippets. The snippets will extract and show more useful info from results than the current ones, Google says.

Now that Google is putting Google Profiles in search results, you might want to consider getting verified. You have to go through a process to do this however.

"Should you get a verified name? Right now, it doesn’t influence whether your profile will rank better in profile results," says Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land. "But if you’re trying to convince people to trust that the page is really controlled by you, it probably makes sense."

Google recently announced 2 new improvements to Google Search. The first is an expanded list of related searches, and the second is the addition of longer search result descriptions.

The company says it’s deploying a new technology that better understands associations and concepts related to searches. Google explains:

Ask is expanding its Ask Domain Nav product, which has been rolling out in phases since the end of last year, when it began beta testing the domain navigation product.

It’s very similar to what Google has been doing, and has incidentally also expanded upon recently. Last week, Google announced it was adding sitelinks for more search results. Here are screenshots of both Ask’s and Google’s versions: