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Since there isn't an official definition of what constitutes a snippet, Google engineers have patented the way the search engine builds snippets for its results.

During the ongoing court battle between Google and its book scanning author and publisher foes, the idea of the snippet has been bounced around as people tried to define it. So far the meaning of a snippet has been whatever Google or any other search site says it is.

Bill Slawski at SEO by the Sea writes that Google has received a patent on snippets. First filed in 2004, the patent called "methods and systems for generating textual information," the patent refers to snippets as a summary based on other summaries of a document, taken from that document.

In part, anyway.

"It doesn’t tell us everything about snippets," said Slawski. "Another unpublished Google patent is referenced that may describe more."

Creating these snippets involves a lot of on-the-fly considerations. Slawski listed size, storage, and keyword presence among the details in a candidate summary Google could draw from when constructing a snippet.

Slawski recommended people should pay attention to the text that "surrounds and supports phrases" searchers may use as terms that could bring one's content to a higher place in the search results when queried.