A new development with Google’s search results has appeared over the past month, with additional search suggestions appearing below a website listing when a searcher ‘bounces’ back from the results. This adds to Google’s range of tools to try to help the searcher find the result most relevant to them.
We previously covered the use of Search Suggestions on Google back in 2013 as the useful list of related terms shown when you type in a search can be a quick way to find the search results you’re looking for, based on the most common searches for the same terms made in the past. Google has also been adding suggested related search terms at the bottom of the first search page for a longer period.
However, in the past month the additional suggestions panel has been shown below individual sites listed in the search results, as shown below:
When you now complete a search and click through to a resulting website, if you then click back to the results page, the site in question will display a panel below the listing, with ‘People also search for;” suggestions. These terms are related to the original search query made, but also to the content from the site in question that was visited.
Google’s intention here is to generate other search ideas and suggestions based on related content, on the assumption that if you have visited a result for a search but then ‘bounced’ – or returned to the search results page – you’ve not found exactly what you wanted and therefore they are presenting you with some different search term options that you can then select and view a new set of results.
From a searchers perspective, this could be a useful tool to help refine or broaden a search activity, and from a search marketing view, it’s also useful to see what terms are being suggested, and in particular for your own website listings in the Google results, to see how Google may be directing people from a click back from your site into the results again. These may be terms that you should consider for SEO or for targeting your AdWords campaigns to make sure relevant phrases identified by Google’s system are being covered.
If you’d like to know more about these new search suggestions, and how you should use them for your own search engine marketing, please get in touch.