Lately, we’ve been noticing something a little different in Google’s search results with some search queries resulting in more descriptive information in the result. The search result shown here illustrates this:

The normal size for a snippet description in Google’s search results has always been about 160 characters but recently, we have observed description snippets with as many as 317 characters. This kind of result was reported in Italian search results last November and also on Webmaster World, some users reported being offered optional “long” descriptions in results. However, we are seeing these results lately with no special preference settings.

We can only speculate on what is triggering the longer descriptions. We have noted that the longer the search query is, the longer the snippet. So, a search for a three-word search query leads to shorter descriptions like this one:

Two or three word queries result in normal short snippet sizes:

These results are not just local. They were reported here in Florida and a colleague up in Minnesota tells me he’s seeing them there too.

We have noticed that, as reported in the TechCrunch article mentioned earlier, the extra descriptive text is pulled from the page even if the page contains more text in the description tag so we see no reason to change existing Best Practices for description tag length.

Is this just something new that Google is testing or is this a real change in the way that Google displays search results? We’ll just have to wait and see.

Building quality inbound links to your site has never been tougher, but there is one quick thing you can do to find quality links that doesn’t take much effort. One of the easiest ways to start out a link building program is to go looking for links that you should already have. By this, I mean that if you’ve been in business for any length of time, you’re probably already listed in various places on the internet. What you want to do is make sure that your website is included in your listings.

To find these potential link building opportunities, you can start by searching for yourself using Google, Yahoo or Live.com. Then, just check out any pages you find that are showing up for your name. If the site listing you is a local search directory, community organization, industry directory or other type of listing that includes a profile of your business, make sure there is a link there back to your website.

In some cases, it may be necessary to pay a listing fee to modify your profile. If so you will want to evaluate the site to make sure that it is worth the listing. Basically, is it likely that anyone will find you there and then click through to your site? Will a listing there get you enough traffic to pay for the link? If so, go ahead and pay the fee. If not, then the listing is probably not worth it. Never pay for a link just to get a link.

However, there are still lots of sites that freely allow you to modify your listing and in that case; this is a great way to get a quick and easy relevant link. If the site is an authority in your industry, that one link could even have a marked effect on your rankings. So, if you’re looking for links, first try looking for yourself. You never know what you might find.

The best pages for customer conversions on a website are the ones that provide the content that the user is looking for. Content is king. Good copywriting, as well as a well-designed site that provides the user with the exact page they are looking for is the key to getting more customer conversions, whether you are driving traffic to your site with search engines or through the new social media marketing channels.

Providing quality content has become increasingly important for effective internet marketing. Google’s algorithm updates and personalized search efforts at the end of 2008 made that clear and there is no reason to believe that this will be changing in 2009. To start off the New Year, Google’s Matt Cutts asked for user feedback on what new web spam Google could target to further improve their results this year. The response was overwhelming, with many good ideas for Google improvements submitted (see the comments for Matt’s summary). From among all the ideas, Google chose to put their first focus for 2009 on making the content in their results pages even more relevant by working on ways to remove or demote “noresults” reviews and cost comparison web spam shopping pages in the search engine results pages and I, for one, couldn’t be happier.

We’ve all seen these “noresults” pages. You type your key phrase into Google (usually something quite specific) and among the list of results you find a listing that reads something like this:

Search for “insert your key phrase here” Find “insert your key phrase here” reviews and price comparisons at Bigonlineshoppingsite.com

Search results for “insert your key phrase here” – Big Online Shopping Site has reviews for “insert your key phrase here”.

However, when you click on the link you find that the site doesn’t really have content to match your query. You find either there are no reviews or they never really had any content matching that phrase in the first place. They just have their system set up to automatically generate pages for popular search queries to try to capture your click. I’m not alone in finding this particularly frustrating. Besides concerns about the accuracy of the Google Maps results, this was perhaps the most popular complaint from Matt’s readers. In fact, many reviewers felt that this should be extended beyond Review and Cost Comparison Shopping sites to large retailers that also display results that have basically no content.

What this means is that as visitors, we can look forward to even better and more relevant results from Google. For retailers, this means that another old “trick” for luring visitors onto your site will be biting the dust and more than ever the quality of the content on your site will be first and foremost in determining your rankings in Google’s results pages.