The meta description tag is responsible for showing users a short snippet of text in the SERP’s. Earlier, we have seen Google experimenting with search boxes in search result pages. Recently, Google has improved the way search snippets are shown and they have added two new features worth noting.

Earlier search Snippets

The earlier search snippets showed a few lines of text that matched with the users web query. A point to ponder is that the snippet might not match exactly with the content of the meta description tag, especially for long tail searches. Normally, the search snippet showed what the page is all about by excerpting relevant text around the webpage where the users query appeared.

Improved search snippets

The earlier snippets were helpful, but it would have been more beneficial if a user could jump to the section of a webpage which appeared more meaningful to his search terms. This is exactly the improvement seen in the new search snippets at Google.

For example :When I searched at Google regarding Indian culture I was shown the following result:

Clicking the title of the search result opens the Wikipedia page, but have a look at the links in the bottom. These are the links to relevant and important sections of the same page. These links allow the user to navigate to the important section of the webpage more quickly.

The second feature added in the search snippet is rather surprising. Sometimes you may be presented with a “jump to” followed by a link right inside the description of a search result.

For example, Searching for the query “good cholesterol level” shows you the following result:

As you can see, a link has been added right in the description of the search result, so that the user can find the information more quickly and directly.

For more information and resources, consult the official Google blog and the Google webmaster central blog. And do not forget to enhance Google search results with Greasemonkey scripts.

What’s your take on the new search snippets at Google ? Share your ideas with us in the comments.