Google SERP Snippet Experiment No. 1
To make the Google SERP Snippet Optimizer Tool, I started by analyzing Google's search results and figuring out how many characters are displayed from the <title> and <meta name="description" content="" /> tags. There was a definite pattern, which seemed to follow this logic:
- If the title has 70 characters or fewer, display the whole thing. (Meta description is 156 characters or fewer.)
- If the title has 71 characters or more, diplay as many whole words as will fit into the 70 character limit.
But knowing the character limits wasn't enough to create an accurate "virtual snippet," since I still needed to know how Google formats the text. One of the reasons I wanted to build this tool is because I wanted to know where Google wraps the Meta description to the second line. To do that, I needed to know how it defines the width of the block elements in the SERPs. Using a Firefox plugin (Web Developer), I outlined the block-level elements in my browser, which revealed that Google puts the Title text in an <h3> element and the Meta description text in a <div> element. Here is a visual aid:
As you can see from the picture, the <h3> block doesn't have a defined width--it simply expands with the Title text. On the other hand, the <div> block does have a defined width (42em), and when the Meta description text reaches that limit, it wraps to the second line.
So my experiment is this: I made the Title of this page 70 characters long and filled it with lots of capital letters and W's--to make it obnoxiously wide. Now I'll sit back and wait for Google to index this page... and then we can see if it really allows my super-ugly Title to stretch across the search results in the Google SERPs. (If it does... then I need to modify my tool, because right now it limits the Title block's width.)
Google SERP Snippet Experiment No. 2
Updated: 2/9/2009
My first little experiment worked as planned. Here is a screen shot of my obnoxious SERP snippet:
I have updated the Title again. This time, let's see if I can get my snippet to go the entire width of the SERP...
Google SERP Snippet Experiment No. 3
Updated: 3/4/2009
Here is a screen capture of the second snippet:
Google Snippet Experiment No. 4
Updated: 3/24/2009
Today I received a random email from a guy named Gerald, who works for a San Francisco search engine marketing company, called Red Bricks Media. This email was particularly unusual (in a good way), because it was from a search marketing agency, but it wasn't auto-generated or contain link requests.
The email said:
Very cool experiment! And awesome name!
So what would happen if you tested a title of one word "WWWW . . . . . ." with 80 W’s?
"If the title has 71 characters or more, display as many whole words as will fit into the 70 character limit."
Will it be blank, or cut off one word with "..."?
- Gerald
I found this to be an interesting question--one worthy of some experimentation. So I took action. First, I changed the title of this page to 80 W's (no spaces) and updated the description tag. Then I went over to www.redbricksmedia.com, to see if it looks like a reputable website--one that I would be confident linking to. The site looks good, the code is very clean, and the landing pages appear to have been carefully optimized by hand. Frankly, I'm impressed. It's rare to find an SEO/SEM site that actually "practices what it preaches." So there you have it: the natural birth of an editorial-grade link.
Anyways... now I'm going to sit back and wait for Google to crawl this page again. I'll be keeping my eye on two things: (1) the new title that Google displays in its SERPs for this page, and (2) redbricksmedia.com's rankings for the phrases [San Francisco search engine marketing] (currently 3rd) and [San Francisco search engine marketing company] (currently 4th).
By the way, here is my prediction, from the snippet tool:
Updated: 3/30/2009
Ok, so my prediction was wrong. Below is a screen capture of what Google is actually showing in the search results.
Here is the actual result, from the SERP:
The question is... where did Google pull "Google SERP Snippet Experiment" from? There are 2 possible sources that immediately come to mind. The first possibility is obvious to everyone: the H1 content at the top of this page. The second possibility is only obvious to me: the original <title> of this page was also "Google SERP Snippet Experiment." So before I try to come up with any other possible sources of the latest snippet title, I'm going to change the H1 tag slightly and see if the snippet gets updated to match it. I'm simply adding "No. 1" to the top H1 element.
It would be interesting if Google is actually pulling this latest snippet title from this page's original <title>, because it would suggest that Google has archived at least 3 historical copies of this page. This page's <title> history is something like this:
2/1/2009:
Google SERP Snippet Experiment
2/9/2009:
WE WILL WIN WWW WARS WHILE THE WORLD WIDE WEB WARRIORS WEAR WHITE WIGS
3/4/2009:
WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW AWESOME MOFO TOOL!
3/24/2009:
WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW
Google displayed all of these titles in the SERPs, up until this last one (implemented on 3/24/2009), at which time it opted instead to display [what might be] the title from 2/1/2009.
Updated: 6/28/2009
I'm finally getting around to updating this page! My last update ended with the following question:
Why was Google showing Google SERP Snippet Experiment for this page's SERP title? Was it using the <h1> tag content or was it using an old title from its archive?
The answer is... it was using the <h1> tag!
After seeing the results of my previous snippet experiment, I changed this page's h1 tag from this:
Google SERP Snippet Experiment
to this:
Google SERP Snippet Experiment No. 1.
The following screen capture shows that Google soon updated their SERP with my new h1 content:
Here is an interesting side effect from these experiments... some of the data in Google Webmaster Tools has become very difficult to read. Check this out:
Google Webmaster Tools layout error
Google Snippet Experiment No. 5
I noticed something else in Google Webmaster Tools that I thought was strange... this page doesn't show up in the data list for external links, but my XML Sitemap does? I have 4 URLs submitted via the sitemap.xml file, and Google has chosen to give me link data on only 3 of those URLs... plus the Sitemap itself? Have a look:
Plus, the link to my Sitemap is a nofollowed link from the comments of an SEOmoz post. A Sitemap with 1 nofollowed link made the list, but my Snippet Experiments page didn't? WTF?
I'm wondering if it's at all related to the fact that this page has had a bunch of W's for its Title. I have changed this page's Title to something normal. I'll see if that makes it appear in GWT...