And this time it is called complying with Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) antitrust policies, which has called for making changes to Google search engine results. The antitrust investigation against Google and many other online companies has been going on for a long time now. Particularly in Google’s case, it has been a 2 year long investigative process.

Changes to Use of Google Snippets:

The latest updates suggest that Google is going to make an announcement concerning major changes to the use of snippets data. Of course, a normal Google user who searches for stuff on day-to-day basis wouldn’t know what snippets are. However, webmasters are the guys who need to know about this sort of thing.

Snippets are bits and pieces of text gathered from websites, such as TripAdvisor, Yelp, Reddit – so on and so forth. When someone searches for something at Google.Com, the search results show snippet data underneath site or page titles.

Some sources reveal that Yelp and major authority websites have charged Google for using their content without permission. This is of course, entirely another case. But nonetheless, a high concern priority for Google. As far as snippets are concerned, they are going to be tweaked one way or another – it is just around the corner, waiting to be implemented.

As of now, Google is trying to reach for a settlement with the FTC authorities on this case. The search giant’s representative says, “We continue to work cooperatively with the Federal Trade Commission and are happy to answer any questions they may have.”

On the other hand, FTC hasn’t said a word about anything. They are keeping a tight lid on the entire snippets case. One way or another, the cat is going to be out of the bag soon – you just have to wait for it.

As a webmaster, I do hope that these changes won’t affect search results to a great degree. We guys are really tired of trying to keep up with latest changes made to SE results every other month. Gosh… what happened to the good old days? Never mind, who am I kidding?

The “Good Old Days” had more spam. Penguin and Panda updates did reduce spam based results to some extent – But there is a lot of ground to be covered. What do you think about Google and the future of your websites in reference to SEO? Let us know. 

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 19th, 2012 at 2:38 AM and is filed under National News, Search Engines. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.