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There is an excellent thread at HighRankings Forum asking if it would be acceptable to change the page's headline based off the search query the user came from via the search engine.
For example, someone goes to Google, searches for [big blue widget] and clicks on your page. The page title by default reads, "Blue Widget" but in this case, the headline would dynamically change to "Big Blue Widget" because that is what the searcher search for.
Is that acceptable?
We covered a similar topic back in 2005 about highlighting search queries based on referrer data in the document. But what about changing the actual text on the page based off of it.
I think this might be a bit in the gray area. I mean, technically, what you would be serving GoogleBot would be different from what you are serving the searcher - slightly different.
Michael Martinez responded that this wouldn't be a high risk issue, he said, "In my opinion, as you propose it is probably not a high-risk practice but you'll only know for sure when you try it."
Anyway, I am not sure how Google would react to this, so if you have done this and have experience with it, do share.
Forum discussion at HighRankings Forums.
Note: This story was written earlier this week and scheduled to be published today.
Image from iQoncept/Shutterstock.
