Google Search has rolled out the “refine this search” and “broaden this search” in the US based English search results, a Google spokesperson confirmed with Search Engine Land today. These features were previewed last year at the Search On event last September.
Google did say that while some are noticing the things to know/consider being tested, this is not yet fully live in Google Search yet.
Refine this search. Google spoke about this feature at Search On claiming the “Refine this search” features enable users to get more specific with a topic or zoom out to more general topics. You can now see it come up for a number of queries, here is a screenshot I saw on my mobile device for this feature:
Broaden this search. The “Broaden this search” features also enable users to get more specific with a topic or zoom out to more general topics, Google said. You can now see it come up for a number of queries, here is a screenshot I saw on my mobile device for this feature:
Things to know/consider. Google told us the things to know and things to consider feature is not live yet in Google Search. Google is indeed testing it, as we pointed out above, but it is not fully live yet.
US English. Google said the “refine this search” and “broaden this search” have rolled out in English in the US Google Search results.
MUM. It is hard to know if Google is powering these features off MUM right now. Danny Sullivan of Google just posted on Twitter that the Things to know feature is not currently using MUM, so it is not clear if these other features are or not. We have followed up with Google to find out if these features use MUM.
As I covered last month, MUM is currently used in only two applications in search thus far.
Why we care. These new search features may lead to searchers finding more ways to discover your site in Google Search. Or it might distract searchers from clicking on your snippet in the search results they are looking at. In any event, Google is constantly trying new search features and staying on top of what went live in Google Search is useful for many search marketers.
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About The Author
Barry Schwartz a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry’s personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here.
