How can I take advantage of Google’s new search results changes?

I think this depends on who you are and what you offer.

But first, I’ll broadly discuss what these new changes are and why they’ve probably come about (beware, lots of screenshots this week).

On Wednesday, Google added a new feature to its search results in the form of a subtle link, which simply states “Show options…”

When you click on this link you’ll see lots of new ways to refine your search, which enables you to get the most relevant result. Here’s what it looks like.

So, for your search query, you can look for videos, see what people have recently said in forums, see reviews on products, services, movies, food, (you name it).

Already though, there are rumours that people are jumping into forums to attack competitors!

Here comes more reputation management!?

The other feature, which dozens of online commentators are talking about, is the “Time” section.

Many are saying Google’s introduced this to try and keep ahead of Twitter’s real time search feature, but I’m not convinced.

I remember thinking last year when I was preparing a presentation on “The Future of Search” (eeeewwwww – that’s so ‘2008′!) how annoying it was to be researching on Google only to find the top results going back to 2004. I think Google’s been aware of this limitation for ages; got everything right with Google News and simply rolled it out into standard results.

I LOVE this new feature! So should SmartCompany. See below…

There are other features that you can explore in your own time (like the nifty “wonder wheel”).

Back the question, “how could my business take advantage of this new feature?”

Here are some examples:

• If you’re into reporting on the federal budget and people are using the timeline feature for up-to-the-minute results, then an online business like SmartCompany might want to post updates like crazy, to keep on top of the most recent results list (a little like you can see in the screen shot above). By the way, thanks must go to Jim Stewart for the federal budget idea – he has an excellent weekly YouTube spot which I highly recommend.
• I’d be using this feature as a reputation management tool (as we saw in the above screen shot with the forum post about Intrepid Travel).
• Try to make sure your web pages include optimised images because Google’s now showing images on your pages in the results with this new feature.
• Consider getting your developer to include rich snippets around content that’s important: This could be cool; you can show more content from your website in the search results!
• If you’re into SEO you can use the “wonder wheel” to complement your keyword research, as well as the related searches feature.

I’m done. Can you think of any others? Feel free to post below!

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Chris Thomas heads Reseo, a search engine optimisation company which specialises in creating and maintaining Google AdWords campaigns and Search Engine Optimisation campaigns for a range of corporate clients.

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