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Google Categories

Lee Odden
Lee Odden
Google, Marketing Industry News, Online Marketing, SEO

Google is always testing tweaks to their search results but today I noticed a very interesting feature that I think is called Google Categories. Below is a screen grab of SERPs for “dvd players”. “motorola cell phones” also triggered these results but things like “lawn care” and “art museums” did not. It’s obviously product focused.

Google Categories

Notice the bold headings on categories of search results including: Comparison Shopping, Reviews, Stores, References and Others. There’s also a link to turn this feature off at the top right, “Turn OFF Categories for these results”. There are other categories including Forums, News and Manufacturers.

With each category, there is a “more” operator for specific categories including more:stores, more:product_references, more:forums, more:blogs, more:news, more:manufacturers.

While the additional categories are suggested at the bottom of the search results, they don’t necessarily work at the moment. For example, clicking on the “blogs” category for a search on “dvd players” did not return a list of search results from blogs. It would be very cool if it did though. My guess is that they’re still working out the kinks.

I tried the same query with another browser and the Categories feature did not appear. Such an implementation Google-wide would have a very big impact on how web sites can be optimized and promoted within Google.

I am not sure how new this is as I’ve not found other references to “Google categories” or “Google grouper”. If you’ve seen this or have more info, please let me know.

About Lee Odden

@LeeOdden is the CEO of TopRank Marketing and editor of TopRank's B2B Marketing Blog. Cited for his expertise by The Economist, Forbes and the Wall Street Journal, he's the author of the book Optimize and presents internationally on B2B marketing topics including content, search, social media and influencer marketing. When not at conferences, consulting, or working with his talented team, he's likely running, traveling or cooking up something new.

Comments

  1. Lee Odden says

    April 18, 2007 at 12:32 pm

    I just noticed that Philipp Lenssen wrote a little about this on Monday:
    http://blog.outer-court.com/archive/2007-04-16-n26.html

  2. Derek Rogerson says

    April 18, 2007 at 1:21 pm

    So GooG is retrogressing to the Web portal/directory of the nineties? How quaint and lovely to meet the old Yahoo half-way!

  3. Brian Heys says

    April 18, 2007 at 3:28 pm

    I find it incredible how Google are turning out so many new products and services at the moment. Just recently, we’ve had Google Blog Search (which I’ve just posted about on my blog), Google Checkout, and now this. Phew!

  4. Rhea says

    April 18, 2007 at 4:05 pm

    That kind of sucks for e-commerce sites that don’t currently participate in comparison shopping. Not to makes the shopping experience more frustrating. What if I don’t want to do all of those things and I’d rather just see sites that have dvd players without reading reviews or comparison shopping? I know that sounds crazy, but it ties into the “paradox of choice.”

  5. Lee Odden says

    April 18, 2007 at 4:13 pm

    Hey Rhea, there is an option at the top right of the screen to turn the categories off. That’s a choice, right? 🙂

  6. Rhea says

    April 18, 2007 at 4:53 pm

    It’s been a long day… you’re right. I completely over-looked that. Thank you! 🙂

  7. Rhea says

    April 18, 2007 at 4:55 pm

    And obviously didn’t read the post fully. I’m a bad blog reader.

  8. Lee Odden says

    April 18, 2007 at 5:04 pm

    Ha, I doubt that – you seem pretty much on top of things to me. 🙂

  9. Rhea says

    April 18, 2007 at 5:10 pm

    Aw, thank you. My boss just made a very valid point – my concern could be valid depending on what Google makes the default display. And, is “turn off” a one time setting or required with each search? I’d really love more info on this, so I hope others respond soon!

  10. Cavan Moon says

    April 18, 2007 at 5:46 pm

    This could be a nice feature as a tab you “turn on” to further sort the organic results, but I can’t imagine Google setting this as the default. It seems to have plenty of kinks, as I notice Shopping.com is the first listing under “Stores” while Bizrate is listed under “Comparison Shopping”.

  11. mlstotts says

    April 18, 2007 at 10:59 pm

    If you like what Google is testing with categorized search for products you should visit Retrevo.com. Retrevo launched in September with vertical search for consumer electronics – if you have to research, buy or fix any gadget Retrevo cuts through the noise and clutter pretty well. – m

  12. Lee McCoy says

    April 19, 2007 at 3:41 am

    I work with many “information based” clients so it’ll be interesting to see how they categorise those sorts of sites.

    Also, it’ll be interesting to see if there’s anything the webmaster could do to get their categorisation changed?

  13. DaveN says

    April 19, 2007 at 4:21 am

    Lee is it just me but have they messed up again :

    videohelp isn’t really a comparison site, but it does compare DVD’s via reviews and links to pricegrabber.

    shopping.com is a comparison site not a store !!

    DaveN

  14. Mike says

    April 19, 2007 at 7:45 am

    Humm, tv-style on the net…….

  15. Lee Odden says

    April 19, 2007 at 8:38 am

    Hey Dave, I’m not sure how they’re figuring out those categories but the search operators were even worse. This must be an pre-pre-pre-alpha sort of test. 🙂

  16. Rhea says

    April 19, 2007 at 9:54 am

    Spam much?

  17. Lee Odden says

    April 19, 2007 at 10:34 am

    I deleted it.

  18. Justin Seibert says

    April 23, 2007 at 8:06 am

    Lee,

    Thanks for showing the screenshots and giving us this update. Do you have any idea how Google’s deciding the category order? Would love any more light you can shed. Thanks.

  19. David Leonhardt says

    April 23, 2007 at 9:39 am

    Actually, for years Google has been displaying a group of spoon bending results in the middle of its SERP for “metal bending”.

  20. Shriram says

    April 24, 2007 at 12:34 am

    Submit the site to the appropriate category at dmoz.org and cross your fingers.

  21. Matt Cutts says

    April 25, 2007 at 5:28 pm

    Lee Odden, you make a couple good points; we’re always trying new approaches and different UIs. In a way-early test, I wouldn’t worry that much about which category a particular site was in.

Trackbacks

  1. Mujeres TIC » Blog Archive » Categorias en Google says:
    April 18, 2007 at 3:32 pm

    […] Google siempre está haciendo pruebas sobre los resultados que da en la búsquedas, pues en esta ocasión, Lee Odden de Online Marketing Blog les ha pillado en una prueba. Se trata de “Categorías Google”. Estos resultados de búsqueda solo salen cuando se realizan búsquedas posiblemente relacionadas con compras, como por ejemplo “motorola cell phones” (moviles Motorola) o “dvd players” (reproductores dvd) . Podéis pinchar en la imagen para verla más grande. […]

  2. Google Categories - Changes to Competitive SEO | SoloSEO Blog says:
    April 19, 2007 at 5:13 pm

    […] Lee Odden blogged about Google Categories yesterday. I wasn’t able to duplicate the categories look, but it did get me thinking about the ramifications of competition if categories in search become commonplace, and how it might influence our SEO strategies as business owners. […]

  3. Le serp di Google raggruppate per categorie says:
    April 21, 2007 at 2:36 am

    […] Leggendo Seroundtable ed alcuni altri, scopro che nei risultati di Google appare una classificazione dei risultati per categorie che non siamo abituati a vedere (ho provato a riprodurre l’effetto, ma le serp sono tornate normali): […]

  4. Net NoBlog di Raffaele Coruzzi » Nuove SERP per Google? says:
    April 22, 2007 at 12:41 pm

    […] Leggo da queste parti, che Google sta testando nuove SERP, che per ora hanno visto in pochi. Ma se ne parla già in rete, e potrebbe essere una delle maggiori novità per il search engine marketing dei prossimi mesi. […]

  5. Google Categories - if released - could become a threat for comparison engines / shopping engines says:
    April 23, 2007 at 1:06 pm

    […] Google Categories, published April 18th. […]

  6. Are Search Engine Rankings are Dead? » Online Marketing Blog says:
    May 11, 2007 at 3:32 pm

    […] With the advent of personalization and impending changes with the interface of search results, the notion of ranking seems to be on it’s way out. In the past 3-4 years, most SEO consulting firms have been focusing on traffic and especially the past 2-3 years on conversions. Standard search engine rankings as a proxy to sales will become irrelevant, especially as other channels of search have emerged in popularity. […]

  7. >> Search Perspective >> Discussions Surrounding Search | TMP Directional Marketing » Blog Archive » Google tests new SERP format says:
    July 13, 2007 at 2:38 pm

    […] Recently, while performing a fairly routine search on Google, something caught my eye.  My results were being fragmented into what are being called “Google categories.”  As other blogs have pointed out, these results are prompted by broad keyterms like DVD players and lawn care.  Our example shows these results are also prompted by a product model number.  […]

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