Google's new SERP URL update

Over the next few days we should see some changes in the way Google displays the URLs in organic SERP. Currently the URL listed in the search result is a citation based version of a page’s URL. It looks like this update is could be part of the Caffeine rollout, where Matt Cutt’s mentioned will only be rolled out on 1 server currently until 2010 – I am seeing the new breadcrumb result about 10% of the time when search for the phrase ’spidersapien reviews’.

The new version will take on a more breadcrumb feel based on the hierarchy of the webpage on the website. Which is determined by Googlebot if;

The information in these new hierarchies come from analyzing destination web pages. For example, if you visit the ProductWiki Spidersapien page, you’ll see a series of similar links at the top, “Home> Toys & Games> Robots.” These are standard navigational tools used throughout the web called “breadcrumbs,” which webmasters frequently show on their sites to help users navigate. By analyzing site breadcrumbs, we’ve been able to improve the search snippet for a small percentage of search results, and we hope to expand in the future.

This is a pretty significant update to how the SERP is displayed, for a long time SEOs have depended on including keywords in their URL or battled with web developers to dynamically generate SEO friendly URLs. Now with this new breadcrumb update, URLs will no longer be shown in the SERP. Which means less significance to SEO friendly URLs or the ability to create even more SEO friendly URLS by eliminating hierarchy information, judging from the quote – all one would need is a HTML navigational breadcrumb for this to work, much easier than doing URL rewrites. Surely there are other factors that Google look for as well ( sitemap / RDF info ? ).

How will this effect CTR? The new format certainly looks nicer, but as a power searcher I like to see the URL before clicking on a link, also one major loss from this update will be the keyword you searched for will no longer be in bold ( see before example ) which does have a positive impact on CTR, since the URLS that have the keyword hi-lighted tend to get more clicks.

Lets also compare the HTML code generated by Google;

There is definitely a lot more code been generated here in the new format, which would justify Matt Cutt’s explanation for the caffeine update as the ability to return more search results faster with more content.

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Related posts:

1. Google Caffeine rollout – Not until Jan 2010 says Matt Cutts
2. ‘Top Search Queries’ – sort by feature in Google webmaster tools
3. Google’s Caffeine Update – Overview & Comparisons