Sphinn - Google Snippet Rules Re Blogs Change

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Sphinn It!

Went Hot: March 31, 2008 - 7:49 am
Posted By: bwelford 461 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://blog.cre8asite.net)
Category: Google SEO

Google snippets appear below each item in keyword search engine report pages (SERP). Good snippets increase clickthroughs to the Web page. It now appears that for blogs the Description should be less than 138 characters to be used as the snippet.

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from bwelford 460 days ago #

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That's somewhat coincidental timing given this Sphinn item only days ago. You may now control even less text within a Google snippet for your blog than you're allowed within a Twitter tweat. I wonder why the Google automatic snippet creator feels that the post date is so important.

from iBrian 459 days ago #

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Good call, Barry. :)

from bwelford 459 days ago #

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Thanks, iBrian. What I'm finding perplexing is that this applies for some posts and not for others. I'm still exploring this but the split is roughly 50/50 based on a reasonable number of samples by now. I can't see the logic and would welcome thoughts from others on possible explanations.

from dannysullivan 459 days ago #

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Really, dates are now consistently showing up for blog posts? Or perhaps did the blog suddenly start putting dates in a new place on its pages. I want a lot more examples to decide this is really happening.

from bwelford 459 days ago #

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This is a change for many blog posts that have no change whatsoever in content or format. By now I've looked at a lot of SERPs that are bringing visitors to my blogs. Roughly half of the blog posts that appear in SERPs now have the date in the language of the searcher as the first part of the snippet. There is no consistency in results. I had recently recommended more attention be put on the Google snippet as a way of engaging more with searchers and getting them preferentially to click on your item (see this article). Coincidentally Google now seems to be modifying one part of their automatic snippet creation process.

from bwelford 458 days ago #

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As an update to this topic, for a group of high traffic blog posts I'm finding 100% now have dates at the start. For other blogs with less visible posts it's running about 25% with dates at the start. It looks as though Google may be progressively rolling this out.