Will Google Squared help or hinder SEO?
It’s been a year since Google announced Squared; its attempt at finding and extracting structured data from the web.
In essence, Squared finds facts rather than web sites or pages. It also enables users to create ‘squares’ of relevant topics or information, from dog breeds to Broadway shows.
Here someone has created an Action Movie square; you can see several columns of facts which users have added (Release date, Running Time, Director).
Google has already implemented some of the techniques from Squared into its standard searches to find facts from the site and highlight them in the search results.
Google’s blog mentions two improvements over the last week and how the features work. Google does sound like they’re striving to create the next step in human-computer evolution by introducing snippets, something different and the sources link. I do look forward to the day I can have a conversation with Google.
Squared is still in its formative years but will it help or hinder SEO?
The squares you land on can take you to relevant pages (if they have been linked) but the sources of information tend to be authoritative (Trip Advisor, IMDB) so it would be unlikely to list individual websites/businesses.
Surely though, SEO’s effectiveness will be reduced if the information listed comes from a 3rd party.
On the other hand, in the future, it could be used to compare prices, areas served, expertise, so it’s a potential replacement for Google Maps.
Unless I’m missing something, Google hasn’t rolled out all of the new features just yet and some are only on the wrong side of the pond. But, anything that allows searches to be more complex and find exactly what the users wants must be good and maybe instead of hindering SEO it will just force it to evolve.
May 26th, 2010
Came to this site by Google looking for answers on putting maps on my page and just wanted to say thank you for your help!