A look at Direct Answers in Search Results at Google

1. March 3, 2015
The Growth Of
Direct Answers:
How Should
SEOs Evolve?
Bill Slawski
Director of Search Marketing -
GoFishDigital
@bill_slawski

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Are Search Query Results Enough?

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Do Query Results become Better for
Searchers if they include (1) Direct Answers
as well as (2) links to Answering Pages?

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Hybrid Query/Question Results

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“Now we are increasingly able to provide direct
answers -- even if you’re speaking your question
using Voice Search -- which makes it quicker,
easier and more natural to find what you’re looking
for.”
Google FORM 10-K for 2014 (For the Fiscal Year Ended December 31, 2014)

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In each case we’re trying to get you direct
answers to your queries because it’s quicker
and less hassle than the ten blue links Google
used to show. This is especially important on
mobile where screens are smaller and typing is
harder.
Eric Schmidt - We built Google for users, not websites (September
6, 2014)

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A patent filed by Google Israel aimed at
Finding Direct Answers to Natural Language
Questions, Published in November of
Last Year…

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In some implementations, the search
system may perform offline
processing of authoritative sources to
determine and store answers to
common clear-intent non-factual
questions.
~ Natural Language Search Results
for Intent Queries

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Natural Language Search Results
for Intent Queries
International Application
No WO/2014/197227
Published:11.12.2014
International Filing Date: 23.05.2014
Applicant: Google
Inventors: Tomer Shmiel, Dvir Keysar,
and Yonatan Erez

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•Frequently selected in search results,
•Consistently ranks high in search results for
queries dealing in the subject matter.
Authoritative Sources

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•How do I treat $X
•$X treatment
•How is $X treated
•How to cure $X
Intent Templates to Find Answers

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A Headings/Answers DataStore is
Collected

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•An Additional Chance to be in Search Results
•Being Seen as “authoritative” by being an answer
•An Answer is formatted differently than other
results; more likely to draw attention
Benefits of Being a Direct Answer

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http://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.com/en/us/pubs/
archive/34460.pdf

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Two Column Tables (Wiki Infobox)

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Relational Tables

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Colon Delimited Pairs

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Introducing Structured Snippets, now a part of Google Web Search

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http://yz.mit.edu/papers/webtables-vldb08.pdf

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•Tabular Data in 2 column tables, relational tables,
and colon-delimited lists
•Knowledge Bases such as Freebase, Wikipedia,
IMDB
•Query Stream Data used in an Ontology like
Biperpedia - Biperpedia: An Ontology for Search
Applications
Sources of Knowledge Graph Info

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Biperpedia –Extracts Attributes

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Answerboxes – different sources
Some are answered
From the Knowledge
Graph

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Some Answers come
From Specific Sources,
Like emergency alerts

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Other Specialized Query Results
Structured metadata extraction
These Results come from Looking for patterns of
element lists on pages about specific entities to use
to create a list like this.

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Interviews with Experts?

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SEO by the Sea
Go Fish Digital
https://www.facebook.com/bill.slawski
https://plus.google.com/u/0/+BillSlawski/posts
Bill Slawski

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