Site Content and Google Accessible Search

July 24, 2006 by 1BlizzAdmin

While doing my daily “blog browse” this morning, I came across something interesting over at the Official Google blog.

A Google engineer has built something called “Google Accessible Search.” Basically, this new program, which is just in the testing phase, ranks results for a given keyword based on the “usability” of the sites indexed. It looks at a web page based on how it would look with images and other distractions removed. When I searched for “Napa bed and breakfast”, the first SERP was a site with a flash intro page, not generally considered “user friendly.”

Take a second to look at your hotel, travel, or hospitality website objectively. Is the on-page information buried in paragraph form, is it hard to find a specific fact or tip? Sometimes, writing a smashing intro paragraph, followed by some great bullet points, makes the page much easier for the user to read. Usability is important to retaining visitors and converting into a return on investment.

One of the big “mantras” over at Google is user-friendly content. Make sure your website provides travel and tourism information or service(s) to the visitor first, and to the search engines second. Post comments to this article with links to your travel website so we can see your usability practices at work. If you’re not sure, post it anyway and we can offer advice!

Carrie Hill - Blizzard Internet Marketing, Inc.

Filed Under: SEM, SEO

Comments

Carrie says:

July 24, 2006 at 2:53 pm

Another benefit of this new feature is the ability for content readers for the visually impaired to read text fluidly, without having to move around flashy photos and graphics.
The developer of this new technology, T.V. Raman, is a Google Research Scientist and hopes to develop this software further to aid in accessibliity and the overall Google goal of User Friendly data.