Black Out Your Google Listing in the Google Search Results
As you know, I am a pretty big fan of Mixx, and I have been using Mixx for a while now, ever since day one. Anyhow, Mixx is not really the focus here; although Mixx is the main reason behind my discovering the fact that you can essentially “black out” virtually your entire listing in the Google search results.
Here is a screen shot of a fellow Mixx user blacking out one line in his Google search result:
I took a look at the Google cache of this page, and it just so happens that this user had decided to put some code in his Mixx profile page that looked really great on his Mixx profile. But, probably by mistake, this Mixx user’s Google search result actually has a line blacked out in the search results.
If you’re wondering what the Google cache looks like, here is a screen shot of it:
This search result certainly brings up some questions about Google’s search results. What would happen if you were to use those characters as a meta description tag on an html page and get that page indexed? Certainly it might draw more attention to that page’s Google search result, causing more people to click on it?
Or, in fact, would the reverse happen? Would the users think that Google–on purpose–is blacking out part of the listing? What do you think?
I took a look at the listing on Yahoo! Search to see how Yahoo! handles the characters in their search result:
Turns out that Yahoo! knows how to deal with the characters, so there is not any blackout on a Yahoo! search result.
Let’s take a look at how MSN deals with it. Same thing as Yahoo!. No blackouts:
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Mar 26th 2008
That would be great for increasing Click-Thru for porn, though I’m not sure about anything other type of content.
Mar 27th 2008
Just wondering how come google can’t handle it whereas MS and yahoo can. Look like google are good in search but, inferior in other areas.
Mar 27th 2008
What can we get if we have more clicks .I dont think its gonna work out much people other than porn bloggers.
Mar 27th 2008
Just like the good old days of Alta Vista and Looksmart and Excite and yes, early Google. Stars, moons, hearts, shamrocks, International character sets, whatever could get through to make it stand out.
Mar 27th 2008
Well this would be an interesting psychological experiment. I know I would be more inclined to click on it just because its an apparent anamoly and I would bet that I’m not alone. If a portion of the listing is blacked out on the first page of the SERPs (or any for that matter) wouldn’t this be beneficial as you would be essentially leapfrogging pages above you as people became curious? I mean its not like page isn’t relevant in the first place, it’s a search query return.
Mar 28th 2008
Thats really a strange find. This will surely increase Clicks
Mar 30th 2008
Funny discorvery but I am not going to try it out myself. I think Google can easliy correct this failure.
gr,
Geld Lenen
Mar 30th 2008
I do not understand the point in this? i dont mean to point out what seems to me ‘at the moment’ obviously a strange thing to do, but why would blanking out lines in google be helpful?
when creating a website from scratch its a pain to search when it is finally cached and seeing how far in the search your listing is that would be the only benifit i would get from this tool.
Lee
Mar 30th 2008
ok addition to my last comment… after re reading the blog and follow a few links to find out why…
i can see the purpose is to have a nice fat black underline to stand your google result out to everyone. nice
KUDOS.
but when i did a search myself for your site i could not find any big black underlines?
Mar 31st 2008
Maybe there are other character that produce more positive look to your SERP. Maybe you can produce other colors. Time for some testing.
Apr 1st 2008
I agree. It would be great for porn and for clickthroughs
Apr 1st 2008
I never knew anyone could manipulate Google results… that’s odd! I imagine it would come up with real results in Google’s cache…
Apr 2nd 2008
That’s an amazing discovery. Google needs to pull up it’s socks once again I guess.
Apr 2nd 2008
That’s odd. I would have expected that Google would consider those characters spam and filter them out.
I wonder what else could be done with this…
But I’m not going to be the one to try:)
Apr 2nd 2008
Interesting discovery. Never saw that happen before(I’m pretty sure I’d notice blacked out line is SERPs) and it will surely increase clicks, kinda hard to resist to see what’s that black thingie about.
Apr 3rd 2008
This trick would be useful for getting curious clicker to check your site once. However if you site promotes or sells a product I think it would be brushed off as a trick and unprofessional.
Apr 3rd 2008
Well, I’m not sure - I think I’d be in the camp that thought - what the blazes is that and clicked it to find out…
It’s certainly eye-catching!!
Cheers, Dan
Apr 4th 2008
yea if I saw all that black i’d definitely be attracted to it :O Neat discovery.
~Mike
Apr 4th 2008
That is a really interesting article Bill. It is so wierd that Google would do that.
Apr 5th 2008
I would think that people would be curious and click on that link because it looks like something has been redacted. I’m not sure how well those visitors would convert, though.
Apr 6th 2008
That’s a nice and interesting find. As mentioned above, there’s not too much you could do with it (parasite hosting!!) but it’s definitely interesting.
Apr 7th 2008
Looks like TunisianGuy’s changed the characters in his profile. Maybe he reads your blog
It is a pretty humorous “phenomena” though. Thanks for catching it. You learn things every day …
Apr 7th 2008
Reminds me of the days of Alta Vista and Excite. It should work out to more clicks for everyone.
Apr 9th 2008
That is a heck of a way to get your listing noticed. I am sure google will fix this soon enough, but wow.
Apr 10th 2008
Google is having problems, I suppose. It is normal to get unnatural results, if the standard open-source rules are broken. It is normal for people to tighten their formulae and to enforce certain things, if webmasters can’t seem to find their lost ethical sense.
However, it’s in no way normal for a random page element to create a totally unexpected effect in the main page of results. Seems the programming team is again in a race against time, before some smart guy finds a bug that can be exploited…