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Writer's pictureRabije Gashi Corluka

Google Launches The ‘About This’ Feature

The search engine giant has launched a feature for its search results snippets that provides more information about search results. Google has tested this before and has decided to launch it now, in BETA mode.

How does It work?

If you want more information about the result given to you, you can simply click on the three dots in the search result snippet. It will give you more information “about this result”, including information from Wikipedia if it is available. You can see if the site is secure, whether it is organic or paid, and much more.

Google said that we will be able to see a description of a website from Wikipedia, “which provides free, reliable information about tens of millions of websites on the web.”

This description will include the most accurate and up-to-date information provided by Wikipedia about the site, as these descriptions are based on Wikipedia’s open editing model, which relies on thousands of contributors around the world.

If there is no Wikipedia description for a specific website, the search engine will display additional context, such as when Google first indexed the site. Here’s an example:

Why Do I Need This?

This is a nice way of providing more information about a page you’ve never heard of before. So, if you’re searching for health or financial information, this additional information might come in handy and give you peace of mind. We highly doubt it would affect your ranking, but you never know how Google plans to use this.

Follow the discussion on Twitter:

OK, I’m seeing the new “about this” feature in the SERPs already. Here are two examples for desktop and mobile. The first (Amazon) has the Wikipedia info and link, the other (Consumer Reports) has info about when it was first indexed. pic.twitter.com/SbiVZ1MxWg — Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) February 1, 2021

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