Related Searches: Is this new?

[skitzzo]

Yeah I just saw that yesterday. I apparently missed the whole thing when they were discussing it...

I just saw it implemented in another popular search and had the top spots for 2 more of the suggested terms. I can't tell yet if it's resulting in any extra traffic but it's nice to know it's there.

[earlpearl]

We all missed it...but it looks like G is experimenting with it. BTW, Bill Slawski has written about G's ability to rather quickly generate new things in serps.

Its way above my head...but Bill is seeing this stuff in his analyses of SE patents over at seobythesea.

[skitzzo]

Yeah I subscribe to his site. I'm sort of in the same boat as you EP, and feel that there's probably a lot that I'm missing but what I do understand is great.

It would obviously make sense for google to be able to add and remove things from the SERPs fairly quickly. Just as we (site owners) should constantly test new things to improve our sites' conversion, they need to be testing new ideas and interface items all the time to "improve the users' experience" (read as: maximize profits from clicks).

[Bill]

Google has been trying out a number of different query refinement processes, and the infrastructure that they've set in place enables them to change those around quickly, and use different ranking algorithms for them on the fly.

Spelling corrections suggestions are one type. You've likely seen some other refinements offered at the tops of search results.

The middle of the page query refinements are another type, and those appear to be related to the study of user sessions for query terms, to find and display their nearby queries, or known highly ranked queries that may be related. I wrote something about that, which is on the long side, so rather than repeat a good deal about it, here's a link to it: Google’s Query Rank, and Query Revisions on Search Result Pages.

These are different from those middle of the page refinement suggestions. I mentioned these before in a forum thread, and I can't recall at the moment if it was Wit, or Softplus, or halfdeck who mentioned that they look very much like query refinements based upon Google Coop listings. The formatting is pretty similar, and I'm prone to agree.