Google surfacing URL above the snippet

[lwoody]

Anybody else seeing this? been away for 10 days so might have missed this.

L

 

[bensd]

URL appearing below the snippet for me...

 

[wb]

Still appearing below for me too.

 

[ELIFE-MZ]

There was a blog post about similar reports at SEL.

http://searchengineland.com/google-testing-url-above-search-results-snippet-78488

Thanks

MZ

 

[lwoody]

rolled out

Looks like they might have rolled this out. More Power to the domain

L

 

[foz]

See it. Hate it.

 

[lwoody]

article

This is a good read http://blog.bigmouthmedia.com/2011/06/02/why-google-testing-result-formats/

Do searchers really use the URL?

In short – yes. Microsoft stated that users tend to URLs more than snippets when viewing results. They asked the participants whether they looked at the URL to help decide if the page will be useful and the same for the snippet. URLs came out ahead.
The report stated “We were particularly surprised to see the overwhelming endorsement of the URL because this is often characterized as a “power-user” feature that is used by only a small percentage of users.”
The outcome of the changes Google is testing seems to depend on the type of query being made. Presuming a roll out of the changes described here, evidence points to Google taking a hit on the performance of informational queries in order to improve navigational and transactional performance.

L

 

[fish]

this will impact those who are(where) on the bottom of p1

"Google’s Adwords land grab continues with the addition of another 10% or so of space above the fold going to paid results. The larger gaps between results also mean fewer organic results fit into the remaining visible space"